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Since November 2020, I’ve been part of a long-term and extensive writing project called the Abolition Lectionary, an effort by Christians for the Abolition of Prisons, headed up by Hannah Bowman. The Abolition Lectionary project is “a resource and preaching aid, blogging through one of the Revised Common Lectionary texts suggested for each Sunday, with a variety of guest bloggers” and you can find all the entries so far here.
Participating in this project has honed some of my own theology, ethics, and social commitments and I think it would benefit a wide readership. If you’d like to check it out, it’s at christiansforabolition.org. Here’s an excerpt from my post for Easter Sunday:
The connection between Easter and abolition of state-sponsored violence is quite clear when you take the story at face value, as the angel describes it in Matthew. Jesus was a victim of both brief incarceration and speedy execution at the hands of the state. And yet, God repudiates that violence and overcomes it in the resurrection. God did not defeat death for us to keep doling it out through the prison industrial complex and other state-sponsored violence like police forces and executions. God did not defeat death for us to keep killing people.
Happy Easter! Christ is risen!
Wesley Spears-Newsome 