Category: Social Media

Recommit…

.Reading time 6 minutes.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (IL)

Over the last three months I’ve made tremendous progress toward earning my PhD at the University of Virginia.  My dissertation project has been approved, and I am now officially writing.  My goal is to finish in May of 2027.  Apparently, the number “7” is my thing…Princeton ’87, Pacific School of Religion ’17, UVA ‘27…kind of cool.

Rep. Terri Sewell

As I approach this threshold, I recognize that my work is needed in the world.  While parish ministry gave me a great deal of practical on-the-ground experience and the opportunity to make one kind of contribution, the experience of immersing myself in the deep study of why people do what they do has been an even more natural fit.  I’m now positioning myself to be able to publicly write, speak and teach in a way that contributes to the capacity for people everywhere to live better with one another.  Specifically, my work responds to the weaponization of belief…belief based on religion or belief that is simply held as if it were religion…a.k.a. dogmatism.  Belief conflated with government defeats the basis of a pluralistic society and we are already mired in that morass.  Stark ideological entrenchment reinforced by technological echo chambers has proven to be the most toxic and potentially lethal invention of the 20th century.

In order to stay focused, I’ve had to remain largely offline over the last few years and particularly since January.  Today, my 61st birthday, however, I’m recommitting to being part of the conversation.  The balance between the day-to-day of academic life (researching and teaching) and the whiplash of modern politics is a lot to manage, but I’m feeling greater urgency as I get more fluent with this work and as more extreme positions of dogmatism emerge.  I believe that it is essential for scholars like me to focus on practical applications for what we study and not just obsess over our personal grain of sand at our computers.

I want to point you toward three moments from this past week that have kept me thinking about what it means to commit to being a public scholar in this time:

Senator Tammy Duckworth on Iran War Powers Resolution

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Representative Terri Sewell confronting RFK, Jr. on his racial (racist) comments

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“Charlie Kirk Laws” promoting religion and free speech

Each one of these moments is a lot to take in.  But a significant line of human logic connects them through what I named before:  weaponization of belief.  The literal weaponization of belief pulled us into the war with Iran; the willingness to weaponize an unfounded racialized belief about black children and families, makes RFK, Jr. a genuine threat in public service; and the weaponization of religious belief is attempting to turn the US Constitution into a legislative sword for Christianity.

My dissertation is about Rev. Ethelred Brown (1875 – 1956), Black Unitarian minister from Jamaica, and the sermons he delivered during the height of the Harlem Renaissance as part of the New Negro movement.  But inside that grain of sand, I’m asking questions about how Brown understood himself at the intersection of Caribbean, Harlem, Black and Unitarian identity and how that understanding translated into his public words as a minister.  I am asking about what Brown believed, why he believed it and how he expressed that belief in his sermons.  While I am humbled by his ministry a century ago, my dissertation goes beyond revealing an important history.*  For me, Ethelred Brown is primarily a foundational case study on whom I hope to base theories and practical tools that might be applied toward the challenges we face in the way belief is activated in the public discourse today.

This blog is a “note to self” to stay in this work.  I will invite you to also consider how you might stay committed to being an engaged participant.  It doesn’t need to have a big splash, but it does require conscious intention.  That is how we disrupt the bots and memes and careless disposable rhetoric.  All of our active and deliberate participation is required.  Not just for the American experiment, but for the wider grand human experiment to realize its full promise and potential.

–ALD

*See the excellent historical work about Brown from Mark Morrison-Reed, and Juan Floyd-Thomas

Comeback

.Reading time 5 minutes.

Several years ago I basically dropped off of social media.  I needed to do this for my sanity.  I had entered into parish ministry and although I’ve long been an advocate of ministers engaging in social media, I found that the algorithms that allow social media to be such a boon for some were becoming deeply toxic for me.  For whatever reason, the algorithms picked up on the extraordinary amount of loss of friends and colleagues in my life and it decided that I wanted to see and hear nothing but news and information about death and dying.  Every time I opened a different app, the news at the top of the feed was about death; advertisements were about therapy and loss, it became overwhelming.

So I left.

Well, I’m going to make something of a comeback for 2023.  I realize now that part of what made it so hard was the technology but more importantly part of the challenge was how I was receiving what the technology was giving me.  While functioning in “parish minister mode”, I felt like it was my responsibility to answer to all of the death and dying that kept coming my way.  Granted, part of this is just who I am as a result of my upbringing (which is a whole other story) I’m someone who always feels responsible.  Yet, what has come clear to me since leaving the parish in August and launching into an entirely new phase of academic study and diving deep into my intellectual thoughts is that the world isn’t my fault!  Who knew?

I’m not alone.  Ministers of all stripes regularly talk about self care and boundaries and intention, but we rarely actually do anything about any of it.  Too often, most of us spend much of our time feeling like the world is our fault.  Regardless of our personal theologies we take on this mountain of responsibility and then have no clue as to what to do with it.  This is part of why I’m coming back ‘online’. I realized that I’ve got some stuff to share that could help my colleagues and others who are part of the vast network of caregivers, support, pastoral ears, etc. who all feel like the world is our fault.

Over the next couple of months, I will relaunch my official website.  Nothing extravagant or super fancy (shout out and deep gratitude to the folks at DEV especially Rachel!) but a place where I can be found besides this blog.  I plan to also produce content here and in other platforms that will take a more pointed look at what sits behind the word “Spirituwellness”.  My hope is to return to some of my roots.  I embarked on ministry and started this blog because being a healer of bodies (massage therapy, fitness, Reiki) wasn’t quite enough.  I wanted to engage people around what they felt gave their lives meaning.  With five years of pastoral training and five years in the field, plus my prior studies and work with embodiment, I feel ready now to actually do what I intended from the beginning.

I’m also planning to test the waters of podcasting.  I’ve always loved the interview/conversation format and with some new tools I will be acquiring this month, I think its time.  All of this to say, look for me again on Instagram, LinkedIn and (ugh) Twitter.  I may even poke my head out on Facebook again (maybe a little Soundcloud and YouTube as well).  I’m giving social media a second chance.  See you again soon in the new year!

– ALD