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I'm currently reading “Black Boy” by Richard Wright (1945).An autobiography what it was like growing up in the Jim Crow South. I thought I was fairly informed for an old white guy, but this was a shocking revelation to me. Horrible to see that Black folks were treated as subhuman😢

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Dec 26, 2023Liked by Rev. Angela Denker

I loved Wright's book and remember reading it in high school.

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Dec 26, 2023Liked by Rev. Angela Denker

Wow...great list of books. I do a lot of reading as well, but we have no overlapping reads! I'll add yours to my TBR list. I'm reading The Founding Myth by Andrew Seidel...with your CN interest, I'm sure you've read it?

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author

Not yet! On my list.

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Dec 26, 2023Liked by Rev. Angela Denker

Thanks for the Minnesota Reformer recommendation. Even though I don’t live there anymore, it looks like a great source for news from my home state. Also thanks for the James Baldwin recommendation!

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You’re welcome!! I agree that group of publications does excellent work. And Baldwin is always a must-read.

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Dec 26, 2023Liked by Rev. Angela Denker

I have read some of Baldwin’s work but not this one... and I’ve been ordained for 36+ years 😉

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I recently finished reading "Just Discipleship," by Michael J. Rhodes, an Evangelical theologian who is passionate about justice and discipleship. He looks at both from a very unique perspective. Rhodes grew up in a southern Presbyterian Memphis church which he said was a "congregation in recovery from racism." This was the same church that (before his time) had experienced weeks of a "Kneel In" on their church steps from Black Christians protesting racism in the church in 1964. His book is very theological (don't read it right before going to bed), but it is refreshing how he uses scriptures seldom used by those looking to the Bible to discuss justice and has a great deal to offer Christians wanting to learn how to relate their faith to government and how to live out one's faith in relation to justice for the poor and oppressed. His discussion of the book of Daniel is espeially enlightening. He also writes about the year of Jubilee and the seven year economic cycles taught in the Mosaic Law. Rhodes has an unusual perspective that is worth spending time with!

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horrible, awful, and wrong, but not "genocide." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides

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That's how it feels to Palestinians living in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

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of course...and I'm not minimizing those feelings, but when we toss around a word like "genocide," we need to be accurate as there is a strict definition of that word. War is hell.

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My opinion is that Netanyahu is bent on genocideHe doesn't even care about the hostages!

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Ugh...I hate that he uses the word "genocide." He's wrong to do so. "The United Nations Genocide Convention defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group". (Wikipedia)

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What would you call what Israel is doing to the Palestinians trapped in Gaza?

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Sorry....I responded above, but should've responded directly to you. I wrote the following above: "horrible, awful, and wrong, but not "genocide." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides

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Thank you for providing this additional insight, Rebecca.

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