Five years ago, I found myself working in a place I hadn’t fully expected to be in – at the intersection of faith and politics in one of the more divisive times in recent American history. When I began working with the Interfaith Alliance of Colorado, I had no idea of the incredible opportunities for learning and growth I would find. Yes, we are in a time when our differences are being exploited and often we are pitted or pit ourselves against the other. There’s nothing new about this. Our country was built on dehumanizing and exploiting people based on differences in skin color, language, and culture. Tribalism and us-and-them thinking are deeply embedded in our American psyche.
This truth had been relatively easy for me to avoid, as an able-bodied, straight, white, Christian woman – that is until I started to enter spaces where the pain of our history and our time were unavoidable, and where my call as a Christian to work for mutual liberation was too insistent.
From “Holy Chaos: Creating Connections in Divisive Times” by Amanda Henderson – Chalice Press