Status Updates From Break Every Yoke: Religion,...

“Faith without works is dead”

The religious community should become “stone catchers” instead of throwing stones at those who have sinned, or witnessing others throwing stones, the religious community should catch these stones so they don’t hit their intended target

The ambiguity of justice

Abolitionists must make moral arguments

“Hope is a discipline”

Need to read Pinker

The use of Jonah as a lesson about easy catharsis in the place of real healing—- really great. Embrace the grief. You cannot isolate the badness to eliminate the grief. Bring love and tenderness to the system. Heal the community

“That is what love is. [when we do this] we transcend ourselves.” That is Revolution

“There is no sacrificing the wicked in service of the righteous. For any of us to be saved all of us must be saved together. No more us and them. No more save us by abandoning them. No more heal us by injuring them. No more free us by binding them. No more enliven us by killing them. No more. Human life lived in God’s image, lived fully, is found in the crossing over of ourselves to the well-being of others”

Re-appropriating Jesus for progressives: “we don’t have to have prisons anymore… because Jesus has taken the atonement for us.” We can instead be restorative for our community “forgive not 7 times but 77 times”

I appreciate that this book is about how important religion is to a community-building culture and to abolition. It’s of course sad that our country doesn’t have more in terms of solid culture (and on purpose), but religion is one thing that has not been thwarted by the government and is still a strong and stabilizing power (tho getting weaker)

Spectacular. A must-read for prison abolitionists and religious practitioners alike.

“Whatever approaches are used, the goal should be prison abolition. To have no alternative at all would be better than to continue the present reality. And we can’t wait for the end of sexism, and racism, and poverty in this country before we begin to tear down walls”

Already one of the best books of the year and I’m only 11% through.