Getting Egypt out of the people | 20 September 2020
Exodus 16:2-15
Joel Miller
Anytime we’re part of a wider movement I think it’s good to pause a bit and recognize that. So I’m grateful that the Ohio Council of Churches has declared today, September 20, Antiracism Sunday. We are one of many congregations across our state worshiping today in the spirit of repentance and resurrection hope. To borrow some language from Rev Jack Sullivan of the Council, our Christian calling, is to detect, disrupt, and dismantle racism. And as church folks ought to know, anytime you can boil it down to an alliteration, you’re on your way. And of course that work of detecting, disrupting, and dismantling racism starts with ourselves.
I’m a subscriber to The Atlantic magazine and a few years back, 1897, there was an essay in The Atlantic by WEB Dubois. It was titled “Strivings of the Negro People.” In that essay, Dubois talked about double-consciousness. This was an idea he kept developing in later writings. Double-consciousness for the African-American, as Dubois describes it, has to do with seeing the world through one’s own perspective and experience as a self-conscious human being,...