They say his name is Pope Leo XIV, and that he is the first to come from the United States. But to us, the First Peoples of these lands — the ones whose stories stretch back to the rivers, stars, and stones — we do not judge leaders by their titles, but by their relationship to the truth.
And so, we look closely.
Before the white smoke rose in Rome, Robert Francis Prevost spent years in Peru, walking among Indigenous peoples in the Andes. He was a missionary there — a man of the Church bringing his teachings into communities that already had their own ways of praying, healing, and knowing the land. Some say he offered education and support. Others know the weight that always follows when priests arrive with crosses in one hand and promises in the other.
He is no stranger to our communities — not by name, but by role.
Another compelling offering from our friends at the Alternative Seminary.
A SIX-WEEK ONLINE COURSE
Thursday evenings, May 29 – July 3, 2024
7:00 – 9:00 pm EST
These are perilous times. In the United States today, we are witnessing the emergence of fascist authoritarianism. Undergirding this movement is a militant White Christian Nationalism – a dangerous heresy in which “American Jesus” is a gun-toting, law-and-order, pro-military, pro-capitalist, and racist Messiah of the Domination System.
We urgently need to recover the authentic Jesus of the Gospels. Together we will explore the radical and revolutionary vision of Jesus in the midst of this emerging fascism. What does Jesus mean in proclaiming “the reign of God”? How can we both prophetically challenge the idolatrous theology in U.S. society and seek to embody a faithful alternative? We will reflect on how the Gospel addresses issues of politics, economics, power, healing, community, and suffering, and how they can empower us to action. We will seek to draw from faith-based resistance movements, including the Confessing Church in Nazi Germany. We will struggle with how Jesus challenges us to be a Beloved Community in these insane and vicious times.
People all over the United States are being snatched up, disappeared, imprisoned, and deported. So how can we be careful amid these horrible conditions? Simply put, we can’t. We can be tactically prudent, but there’s no guarantee of safety for anyone serious about Palestine solidarity, or for anyone who is vulnerable by virtue of identity or legal status. There’s no guarantee of safety for anyone, really, in a world that so readily tolerates genocide.
“Be careful” has other uses and connotations.
For example, I would suggest that you be careful about nostalgia for a democratic polity that never was. Be careful about activists and organizations appended to the Democratic Party. Be careful about the podcasters who built an audience by caping for Bernie Sanders. Be careful about celebrities who moderate support for Palestine under pressure. Be careful about genocide profiteers in the film and publishing industries. Be careful about the next shiny young politician who comes out of nowhere to save us. Be careful about anti-Zionists who ignore Palestinians. Be careful about anyone who prioritizes the settler’s existential angst. Be careful about anything that tries to make a place for oppression in this world.
And, for God’s sake, please be careful about the supposedly radical luminaries interjecting liberal Zionism into conversations about Palestine.
In these instances, “be careful” isn’t an appeal for you to keep safe; it’s a demand that you seek to protect everyone else.
Re-posted from the social media account of Ashon Crawley (above), Professor of Religious Studies and African-American Studies at the University of Virginia
i am an abolitionist. i think naming harm is important so that you can repair. in this political climate, it can feel like the democratic candidate said at an event a couple weeks ago—”i told you so”—but, honestly truly, that’s not what the moment requires. the moment requires clarity and honesty. it is easy to misremember the past especially in times of political and economic tumult but that misremembering don’t change what things happened.
so a reminder:
people were being arrested and fucked up for saying free palestine. artists were losing installations, gallery representation and exhibits for watermelon in bios. professors and folks in other industries were losing jobs for even a suggestion that there should be a ceasefire. college presidents were giving hella milquetoast responses, being hella islamophobic, and still losing their jobs because it was determined they were not serious about antisemitism. people protested at mother emanual the violence palesinians were experiencing to the then-sitting president that was bypassing congress to provide that place with more weapons, and in the church shushed them, said it was shameful, and in the church cheered on biden and “four more years!” and said he and kamala were working “endlessly on a ceasefire agreement,” and this they said as that administration continued to bypass congress to provide weapons and money. my students were brutalized by police. and so many of my friends’ and colleagues’ students were too on campuses across the united states. no pro-palestinian voice was allowed to speak at the dnc, and as they protested by offering names and ages of those that were dying, they were literally laughed at and mocked. there was no general rebuke for this laughing and mocking. if mentioned at all, it was explained away.
and but also just yesterday, april 29, 2025, The Times of Israel periodical published the following: “God did the State of Israel a favor that Biden was the president during this period… We fought [in Gaza] for over a year and the administration never came to us and said, ‘ceasefire now.’ It never did. And that’s not to be taken for granted,” stated by former Israeli ambassador Michael Herzog.
that administration lied. explicitly. and continually. and they tried to suppress any organizing that third party folks were doing. the attempt to embarrass jill stein on the breakfast club, and then the advertisement to discredit her, both happened with these particular lies as the pretext for criticizing her and any third party folks in general. call it voter suppression. but no, the current conditions isn’t the fault of third party voters and leftists.
Another compelling offer from Christians for a Free Palestine on May 15 at 8pmEDT. Register HERE.
As Christians who recognize the troubling legacy of Christian supremacy and are committed to the safety and liberation of all people, we have a responsibility for the Christian roots of anti-Muslim hatred, its impact on U.S. foreign policy, and its implications for Palestine. More details to come.
This is the second in a series on Confronting Christian Supremacy. In April we discussed Christian supremacy, antisemitism, and Project Esther.
From Dr. Ezzideen Shehab (above), re-posted from social media on April 25, 2025. Support the publication of his first book here. Support his medical clinic in Northern Gaza here.
This morning, the heralds of decay, UNRWA and the World Food Programme, proclaimed what was already written in the bones of the living: the flour is gone, the food is spent, and the age of starvation has officially begun.
No more bread for the condemned.
No more hollow ceremonies of distribution.
Now, the mask has been torn away: the people are sentenced to death by hunger, and the world has chosen not to hear the verdict.
Behold! There is no economy, no labor, no dignity of exchange. The body, stripped of its last illusions, becomes an animal clawing at the dust. The soul, once capable of hope, sinks into a silent, grey despair.
From organizer and theologian Claudia de la Cruz, re-posted from X (04.21.2025).
In November 2016, I participated in the 3rd Gathering of Social Movements in Rome. A process initiated by the @MST_Oficial
Pope Francis shared a powerful message that day which was anti capitalist and centered humanity and the planet as sacred. His message was one in defense of people’s dignity and the right to housing, land and work. He also shared a very humble request – “if you pray, pray for me. If you don’t, send me good vibes!” I couldn’t help but do both, after all, he was speaking these words from The Vatican- a place of power and contradictions.
As it is with many, his life wasn’t a straight line, but it was filled with moments of great courage and love for the people. He stood against blockades, sanctions, capitalism, militarism and genocide. He spoke up for Cuba, Palestine and all who’ve suffered as a result of oppressive and exploitative systems. His faith and convictions moved him in the direction of the people- as it should be.
Words from his speech to the movements who were present in Rome in 2016.
“Who is really in charge, then? Money. How does it govern? With the whip of fear, of inequality, and of economic, social, cultural, and military violence—a violence that breeds more and more violence in a downward spiral that seems never-ending. So much pain, so much fear!
As I’ve said before, there is a foundational terrorism that arises from the global control of money over the earth and threatens all of humanity. Terrorism truly begins when “you have cast aside the wonder of creation—man and woman—and replaced it with money.” That system is terrorist.
This warped system may offer certain cosmetic implants that are not true development: economic growth, technological advances, greater “efficiency” in producing things that are bought, used, and thrown away—dragging us all into a frenzied cycle of waste…
But this world does not allow for the full development of the human being —development that cannot be reduced to consumption, that is not limited to the well-being of a few, but that includes all peoples and individuals in the fullness of their dignity, allowing them to share as brothers and sisters in the wonder of Creation. That is the kind of development we need: human, integral, respectful of Creation, of this common home.”
An excerpt from Cornel West’s Democracy Matters (2004).
The ultimate Christian paradox of God crucified in history under the Roman empire is that the love and justice that appear so weak may be strong, that seem so foolish may be wise, and that strike imperial elites as easily disposable may be inescapably indispensable.
The real scandal of the gospel is this: humanity’s salvation is revealed in the cross of the condemned criminal Jesus, and humanity’s salvation is available only through our solidarity with the crucified people in our midst. Faith that emerged out of the scandal of the cross is not a faith of intellectuals or elites of any sort. This is the faith of abused and scandalized people—the losers and the down and out. It was this faith that gave blacks the strength and courage to hope, “to keep on keeping on,” struggling against the odds with what Paul Tillich called “the courage to be.”
The cross and the lynching tree interpret each other. Both were public spectacles, shameful events, instruments of punishment reserved for the most despised people in society. Any genuine theology and any genuine preaching of the Christian gospel must be measured against the test of the scandal of the cross and the lynching tree.
Last week, the U of Minnesota deleted this American Indian Studies’ statement on Palestine, which was posted in December 2023.
We the undersigned faculty and staff in American Indian and Indigenous studies at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities (UMN) understand our accountability to the peoples, lands, waters, and skies of Dakota Oyate. We are employed by a land grab university built from stolen Dakota, Anishinaabeg, and Ho-Chunk wealth, land, and blood. Invaded and then claimed by Euro-American settlers, “Minnesota” has, for more than one hundred years, maligned and demonized Dakota patriots who resisted genocide. Their descendants continue to be denied return or land back. Streets and university halls proudly bear the names of the architects of genocide while Dakota calls for justice are ignored, silenced, or shuffled into empty gestures of reconciliation, land acknowledgement, and diversity, equity and inclusion.
It is from this place and position of advancing justice for the crimes of genocide in “Minnesota” that we proclaim unequivocal solidarity with the Palestinian people who presently suffer and resist genocide halfway across the world.
No nation-state should exist through the genocide of another people, particularly when that existence also involves, as it does in Palestine, a longer and ongoing history of colonial and military occupation and apartheid of the other’s homelands and peoples.
Recently, some of us have helped the Palestinian community at UMN publicly say the names of Palestinian relatives and friends killed in this obscene and criminal campaign. For this act, we have also been criticized for being anti-Semitic and for “supporting Hamas.” But we will continue to say their names like those of so many other victims of hate and war fueled by imperial and colonial violence. We say their names to witness and resist genocide and injustice everywhere.
Of the more than nineteen thousand Palestinians killed, almost 70% are women and children, the direct result of the state of Israel’s indiscriminate revenge for the deaths of more than a thousand foreign nationals, Israeli soldiers, and Israeli civilians and the capture of more than 200 Israeli soldiers and civilians after Palestinian fighters and civilians broke through the Gaza border on October 7, 2023.
In no way is the “conflict” an equal one: we see in the staggering incongruity of the tally–and in the rubble in Palestine–the grotesquely disproportionate demands of, on the one hand, Palestinian national defense and right of return, and, on the other, the Israeli state’s genocidal expression of its right to exist.
Also unequal, unjust and obscene is how the Israeli state acts with such remarkable impunity, a pass made possible by the monstrosities of financial, military, technical and cultural imperialism of the United States and the Western world powers.
Like other universities in nation-states whose existence is procured through the genocide and removal of Indigenous peoples, UMN risks functioning as a proxy for mounting state repression of resistance and justice. Like the recent measure by the U.S. Congress to criminalize outspoken Palestinian students, political figures, and allied organizations, University leaders across the country have also capitulated to external lobbying and financial pressure to crack down on freedom of speech and critical expression by outspoken faculty, staff and students. Such campaigns of repression on campuses silence critical perspectives that undergird vital principles of academic freedom, governance, and excellence. These campaigns of repression, too, are complicit with genocide and injustice. They, too, should be loudly condemned and resisted. We applaud, therefore, those few University Presidents and University leaders who have courageously spoken up in this milieu to affirm the rights of faculty and students to speak out and to condemn retaliatory action against them.
We will not be silent. We will not be silenced. We will resist. We welcome you to join us.
Our statement, by we who constitute a large majority of the members of the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, does not reflect the views of the College of Liberal Arts nor should be taken as the official view of the University of Minnesota.
signed (alphabetical order):
Prof. Christine DeLisle Nicholas DeShaw Prof. Vicente M. Diaz Prof. Nick Estes Prof. Jessica Garcia Fritz Prof. Kat Hayes Prof. Brendan Kishketon Nora Livesay C̣aƞtemaza Neil McKay Prof. Meixi Prof. Jean O’Brien Prof. Gabriela Spears-Rico Prof. Melanie K. Yazzie
On Good Friday, we get back to the basics: an excerpt from James Cone’s 
Radical Discipleship 