Reflecting on Abolition as Resurrection: A Lent and Easter Podcast Miniseries
by: Jia Johnson, SBI Director
For many of us the past two years have been particularly challenging-- global pandemic, social uprising, insurrection, joblessness, vaccine inequity, and the list goes on and on. If you are also part of the community directly impacted by these oppressive systems, the challenges were compounded.
This was true for me and my own family. I encountered a handful of experiences where praxis collided with theory, and my commitments to my beliefs in abolition and restorative frames for addressing harms were put to the test. Theory is easy. Praxis is difficult. As I wrestled with the tensions and challenges I was experiencing between theory and praxis, I became weary, but then last April something began to shift for me.
As someone who is on an abolition learning journey, I began to consider the connections to abolition and resurrection. Last year, I shared on social media: “I am becoming more and more convinced of the continuity between #abolition and the Christian understanding of Jesus’ #resurrection. Just as the resurrection unequivocally pronounced that the death-dealing practices of Empire do not have the last word, abolition movements throughout history are the ongoing works of the resurrection, ushering in life-giving spiritual and social realities.”
This is when I began to consider Abolition as Resurrection.
I’ve been nurturing this connection since, and it’s deepened my commitments to making abolition an everyday practice and social and political realty. When I shared this insight with my dear friend Camille Hernandez—theopoet and podcaster, she said YES!! Let’s create something and share it with others.
What better place to connect this personal invitation than with the work of SBI!!
As part of SBI’s Public Education and Advocacy programming, a podcast miniseries is on its way!
Coming this March is a Lent and Easter devotional podcast miniseries part of the “Abolition as Resurrection” podcast that explores abolition and its (potential) relationship to resurrection, co-hosted by me and Camille. Together we will be in conversation with historians, scholars, community organizers and abolitionists to learn more about abolition.
We are asking big questions: What is abolition? What’s its relationship to Christian spirituality? And how can we pursue a lifestyle t of practicing abolition into our everyday lives while making it a systemic reality?
Watch the Abolition as Resurrection podcast trailer here or on IG at @sbimccormick. This miniseries will officially premier on Ash Wednesday, March 2, 2022.
Subscribe to Abolition as Resurrection podcast on your favorite podcast app.
---
Jia Johnson is a community healer at the intersection of creative education, liberative praxis, community building, spiritual writing and abolition. Her commitments to dismantling oppressive systems and imaging into existence new systems of flourishing are influenced by her lived experience, community of belonging and progressive faith beliefs.
Johnson designed and established the Solidarity Building Initiative for Liberative Carceral Education at McCormick Theological Seminary (MTS), and currently serves as its director. As director, she serves as a creative educator, liberative practitioner, and community builder, co-creating learning communities, programs, curricula and collaborations that tend to the whole of incarcerated learners at the Cook County Jail and their communities of belonging.
