#78. John Dear with theologian/author/activist Lisa Sharon Harper: "We were three floors below ground, it was hot and the walls and floor were covered with roaches."
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#78. John Dear with theologian/author/activist Lisa Sharon Harper: "We were three floors below ground, it was hot and the walls and floor were covered with roaches."
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Today I speak with my friend Lisa Sharon Harper. Lisa is a theologian, speaker, author, activist and trainer who has worked in Ferguson and Charlottesville, as well as South Africa, Brazil, Australia, Ireland and across the U.S.
Her 2022 book, Fortune: How Race Broke My Family And The World--And How To Repair It All, was named “Book of the Year” by Word and Way.
Her 2016 book, The Very Good Gospel, was named “Book of the Year” by the Englewood Review of Books.
After her leadership at Sojourners magazine, she founded Freedom Road, where she is the host of its podcast and column on Substack. The Huffington Post named her one of 50 Women Religious Leaders to Celebrate on International Women’s Day. (See: )
When I asked her about these days of social injustice, white supremacy and permanent warmaking under Trump, she spoke of crying every die.
“I actually have hope but I'm grieving like the rest of the country,” she said.
“I cry because of the Church's silence during the Obama era and back to the 70s/80s during the rise of the religious right. People didn't know what was right, just and Jesus's way…Evil is embedded in the Constitution and in the 3/4 compromise.
I grieve for our inaction in the past. It didn't have to be this way, but in every generation, there is a remnant. There has always been a witness of the actual Jesus way of being in the world."
"Right now, that witness is alive and well.”
She told three stories:
- Her time in Ferguson in August, 2014 after Michael Brown was killed by a white policeman;
- Her time in Charlottesville, VA, when she was present in the protest against Trump’s neo-Nazis who killed Heather Heyer;
- Our experience when we were arrested and in the D.C. Central Cell block jail after protesting at the Supreme Court on the 40th anniversary of the U.S. death penalty.
She shares about her organization, Freedom Road, which trains people of faith to take public action for justice, as well as her recent best-selling books and why she wrote them.
“Nonviolence is the only way for people who are not on the upside of empire to fight back,” she concludes.
"Nonviolence is the only way to not be at war with God.”
Listen in and be inspired by this peacemaker to carry on!
Lisa Sharon Harper
Follow Lisa on Substack
www.freedomroad.us
beatitudescenter.org
Follow me on Substack
🌻, John