The introduction to ARC was fascinating and eye opening, but it also felt like something I had known all along without having the words. As I look back on the environment I grew up in, it seemed that though I was not growing up in a church for most of my formative years, in the south I was within a culture of ARC.

One thing Lindsey said last week that has stuck with me has been to maybe approach our understanding of ARC’s influence by instead looking for the absence of Democratic Covenantal Abolitionism: to define ARC’s influence “by the LACK of democratic processes that represent everyone, where there are no voices to the voiceless, where people are not living in covenantal community, but are living for power; where there is not a sense of equality and everybody for everyone…where is that not happening?” I plan to follow her lead here and search for the lack of DCA in my faith, institution and leadership. 

Here are my other thoughts… First, I want to interview my mother and ask her why she chose the politics that she did; was it simply because of her own family upbringing? The only practicing Christian that I can think of in my family was my great grandmother, a devout Catholic who died when I was little, but my entire family seems to be on the same page with Republican political leanings. Was my mom, like me, a product of the environment she grew up in; what did the church have to do with it?  Was it the times? Did the major world conflicts affect or change her politics? Perhaps I will ask my laid back dad too, who seems to visibly pale when anything remotely controversial like politics comes up! 

I have also been having conversations with one of my best friends about the topic of ARC. We have been having conversations about how the LGBTQ+ community feels welcome at the church she has been visiting, whereas this was not the case at all at the evangelical churches we have been a part of. We have been talking about ARC’s influence on specific ways in which the evangelical community has ostracized and othered this community, and we have slowly started branching out to discovering other ways we see ARC at work in the church. I plan to continue these conversations with her and to ask if we can go through the Self assessment and Common Table at least in part. As this is also part of the Common Table plan, I am also going to read Dr. Gushee’s book.

I am also simply being more aware and allowing myself to ask these questions as I sit in my church.  I have been able to create an opportunity for the artists in our church to share their creativity with the church community, which I am truly thankful for. This summer I plan to create artwork that highlights the beautiful resilience and fragility of the Christians in Palestine during conflict (the current one as well as the decades of conflict), and perhaps give a critique of the American Christian response to the situation today. I have been diving into learning how an unwavering support for Israel and a strange obsession with end times prophecy is a great example of ARC’s influence on the church and on America. I am approaching this art piece with curiosity and some trepidation of how it will be received by my fellow church members. 

Lastly, I’ve begun to lean in to having conversations with those who I may not agree with, and these interactions have proven to be helpful case studies of where ARC might be fueling my brother’s and sister’s resistance to listening or empathizing with other perspectives, and a very black and white approach to issues. It is also a helpful way to assess my own progress as I look back and consider in what ways I might have responded differently, and why.