The book that has probably exerted the greatest influence on my faith journey is The Christian Imagination by Willie James Jennings. In it, Jennings examines the history of Western colonialism and its inseparable connection to church history—and Christian theology. He explores how that theology underpinned the invention of race, the erasure of cultures, and the commodification of land.
I still have so much work to do to reimagine land not as property but as a facilitator of life and identity. Of course a big part of this will be learning from Indigenous voices and wisdom. I’m also grateful for articles that grapple with our impoverished view of land from the settler perspective—like Ben Norquist’s thorough and imaginative land acknowledgement, or the Century editors’ reflection on what landowners owe Native people.
“I am going to retell the story in reverse—beginning with my ownership of the land and tracing it backward toward the Potawatomi. While traditional chronology allows us to think of the past as behind us, reversing it forces us to encounter the ongoing presence of the past.”
“The jet black of the bird’s sleek head,
dazzling white of breast and checkered flank,
the sheer bulk of the dark body
a steady, calm sufficiency, utter completeness . . .”
