https://joh.globalimmerse.org A Global Immersion Site Mon, 10 Feb 2025 19:46:03 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.1 https://i0.wp.com/joh.globalimmerse.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/tgip_symbol.png?fit=22%2C32&ssl=1 https://joh.globalimmerse.org 32 32 230786137 https://joh.globalimmerse.org/2025/02/10/questions-that-i-did-not-ask/ https://joh.globalimmerse.org/2025/02/10/questions-that-i-did-not-ask/#comments Mon, 10 Feb 2025 19:46:03 +0000 https://joh.globalimmerse.org/?p=1912 Continue reading Questions (that I did not ask)]]> I really enjoyed our time with Dr. Ruth Padilla DeBorst. During the conversation, I wrote down a couple of questions that I didn’t end up asking. They were too long, and I didn’t want to overstep and ask two long-winded questions that would potentially pull the conversation in a particular direction. I shared them with my breakout group, and I thought I’d put them on here as they do seem to represent the ways that my “ache” and “pressing question” have been refined by the conversation.

1. It feels like in these first two weeks of the Trump administration, there has been an intentionally overwhelming and chaotic push toward priorities of USA power and wealth, mixed up and supported by the Christian Nationalist movement. Dr. Padilla DeBorst talked about some of the immediate affects of these actions around USAID, changing immigration patterns, and way that they represent a shift in USA global priorities which will undoubtedly affect people all over the world. It feels like many of us are struggling to figure out how to respond and how to organize. We are so cynical of everyone that it’s difficult to find leaders to coalesce around. Who should we be following, joining, and collaborating with? Are there names of people and organizations that are creating meaningful resistance in the immediateness of this moment? How can we learn to temper our cynicism and open ourselves more fully to collaboration?
2. Longer term, in trying to join a movement toward a southern shift in ecclesial power, things are complicated by the racial and patriarchal systems that have been instilled in many of the structures in southern hemisphere Christian institutions, often by the the Northern/Western Christian groups that have been active in Southern Hemisphere missions work for many years. How do we in the global north untangle our own mixed priorities around justice, growing in self-awareness about our northern privilege and our own colonial formation? How can we enter the complicated work of listening more fully to the voices of the global south without abandoning the critiques that have become significant as we deconstruct patriarchal systems in our own context?

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