Tag: Nick Peterson

Thinking Out Loud: Supremacy

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn RaceLeave a comment

Nick PA Facebook post from Rev. Nick Peterson (July 1):

some white people are concerned that black people hate them.

there are white people who never hated black people and did little to nothing to challenge the systems that oppress black people.

some people believe hate is a key ingredient to oppression.

if we focus on hate, we can keep the conversation to individual actions that convey hate and bias.

the driving force behind oppression is always material gain.

hate functions as the myth to justifying oppression. Continue reading “Thinking Out Loud: Supremacy” →

White Ain’t God

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Race1 Comment

nick petersonA recent Facebook post from Rev. Nick Peterson, Capital Presbyterian Church, Harrisburg, PA:

As a powerful but vain imagination, white supremacy attempts to imprison God to whiteness. In a white supremacist framework – God has a white sentence without parole. While confined, God must look white, talk white, think white, affirm white, bless white, and value, above all things, “his” own image made in whiteness. White supremacy attempts to hold the very God of the universe in chains – theological, liturgical, spiritual, creedal, geographical, social, emotional, and political.  Continue reading “White Ain’t God” →

I Need A Hand

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Biography as Theology, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

DSCN3227By Rev. Nick Peterson (right, being introduced by Ruby Sales)

Without this effort, the secret place is merely a dungeon in which the person perished; without this effort, indeed, the entire world would be an uninhabitable darkness.
James Baldwin, Another Country (1962)

My friend was in pain. All the things he held dear and cherished were slipping from his grasp.  In naming his losses he named his desire to grab ahold of something, something to help him live, to help him cope.  I wanted to comfort him, to hold his hand, make some kind of physical contact, to disrupt the isolation he was feeling. But I hesitated, unsure of an appropriate way, a manly way, to comfort my friend.  Truthfully, I was paralyzed by the fear of what my touch might communicate about my identity as a man, my sexuality, and my connection to him.
Continue reading “I Need A Hand” →

Faith in a Christ Who Understood In His Own Body Oppression & Suffering

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Cloud of Witnesses, Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

Lancaster BLMA Call to Worship written by Nick Peterson (photo: far right) for today’s service at Capitol Presbyterian of Harrisburg, PA:

The Lord be with you.

A year ago today, Michael Brown, Jr., an 18-year-old recent high school graduate while unarmed was shot and killed by officer Darren Wilson in Fergson, MO. His death and others like Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Renisha McBride, and Oscar Grant sparked a national movement aimed at bringing awareness to racialized police violence and excessive use of force.
Continue reading “Faith in a Christ Who Understood In His Own Body Oppression & Suffering” →

A Day of Remembrance: A Reflection

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire1 Comment

DSCN3227
We who believe in freedom should not rest until the killing of black men, black mothers’ sons, becomes as important to the rest of the country as the killing of a white mother’s son. We who believe in freedom cannot rest until this happens.
Ella Baker
—————
Tom Airey, Washington D.C.

This week, on a sunny Fall Wednesday at D.C.’s Freedom Plaza, SpiritHouse Project of Atlanta, recognizing that racial justice is both a spiritual and social concept, hosted a “Day of Remembrance” for the “slow genocide of extrajudicial killings” of people of color that continues to plague the United States. This event took the form of a memorial service, a wooden coffin taking center stage, filled with the scrolls of one thousand names of those killed by the police or state-sponsored vigilantes (think Trayvon Martin) since 2007.
Continue reading “A Day of Remembrance: A Reflection” →