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Love > Hope: On Nourishment for Movements
D Michael Durham D Michael Durham

Love > Hope: On Nourishment for Movements

Hope may be valid for social-justice movements, but it fails to sustain us. And worse, nonprofit-industrial-complex executives too often weaponize hope to shame underpaid laborers for tapping out in the face of regression. But love is more nourishing sustenance for our movements anyway.

This article draws from abolitionist values that echo the teachings of street outreach practitioners who bear witness to the most profound human suffering and who, like many activists, have every right to despair.

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A Short Introduction to Abolition Theology
D Michael Durham D Michael Durham

A Short Introduction to Abolition Theology

Someone recently asked me what my religious or spiritual orientation is, an appropriate question in context because we were meeting in relation to a divinity school. I started to tell him I was raised conservative/evangelical/charismatic/nondenominational, that I drifted from that interpretation of Christianity in college, floated around a hipster church in grad school (studying theology), but haven’t been to church in ten years. I told him my recovery community is situated in a Buddhist meditation center, and I love studying that tradition, but feel no need to identify as Buddhist. I am a student of religions, I said, but don’t belong to any particular one. I could feel his dissatisfaction with the ambiguity of this response because I shared that sentiment. Then, I grabbed the book by my desk, Mariame Kaba’s latest tome, and thumping it like a Bible, I told him I wish it sufficed to say that I’m an abolitionist. Kaba’s work is deeply spiritual to me. Abolition is my religion.

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