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Anthony Smith

@postmodernegro

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Autodidact, Poet, Writer, Faith-Rooted Organizer, former City Council Member [Salisbury, NC], DSA member, based now in Birmingham, AL

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A GEOGRAPHY OF AWAKENING | PART 4: LEARNING TO SEE THE POWERS

A neighborhood does not become what it is by accident.

Someone makes decisions about land, housing, schools, roads, development, public money, and whose concerns deserve to be heard. Those decisions accumulate. Eventually, they become the landscape we mistake for normal.

Awakening means learning to see the powers behind the places. Not imagining shadowy forces behind every problem, but identifying real institutions, budgets, policies, ownership, and organized interests.

For Christians, this is not a distraction from the gospel. Jesus announced a kingdom that challenged the arrangements of his world. Love of neighbor requires more than responding to harm after it happens. It asks us to examine the conditions producing it.

If a place has been organized in ways that wound people, it can be organized differently.

What decision is shaping your neighborhood right now?

#AGeographyOfAwakening #FaithAndJustice #Birmingham #CommunityOrganizing #WestJeffersonCounty taken in Birmingham, Alabama by @postmodernegro

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2 days ago

THE PLANTATION’S THEOLOGY SURVIVED THE PLANTATION.

The recent controversy surrounding revivalist Philip Anthony Mitchell brought me back to a scene from The Birth of a Nation (2016).

Nat Turner discovers that the Christianity he was told to preach to enslaved people is radically different from the faith he finds when he reads Scripture with new eyes.

Same Bible. Different gospel.

One teaches the oppressed to endure suffering, obey authority, and await heaven.

The other announces good news to the poor, freedom to the captives, and judgment upon oppressive powers.

And here’s what troubles me: some descendants of the plantation’s theology are still preaching in Black pulpits today.

I’m not questioning Mitchell’s sincerity or the experiences of those drawn to his ministry. But the moment raises a question:

WHAT EXACTLY ARE WE REVIVING?

We can fill stadiums, preach holiness, and celebrate deliverance while leaving untouched the conditions producing suffering in our communities.

We can denounce personal sin while remaining silent about organized injustice. Preach deliverance without confronting the powers that keep people captive.

Our enslaved ancestors also discovered in Scripture a God who heard the cries of slaves, confronted Pharaoh, and raised a crucified man from the dead.

Perhaps it’s time for more preachers to do what Nat Turner does in this scene:

Go back and read the Bible again. All of it. With new eyes.

Not through Pharaoh’s eyes, but through the eyes of the enslaved. Not through Caesar’s interests, but through the life of the crucified Jesus.

I’m not opposed to revival. I’m asking whether our revival is awakening us to the world Jesus came to transform.

A Christianity that can fill a stadium but cannot see the suffering outside its walls has theological work to do.

We don’t simply need more powerful preaching. We need preaching that helps people recognize the powers.

The gospel isn’t merely about preparing people to leave this world. It’s about God’s new creation breaking into this one.

Whose Christianity are we still preaching? taken in Birmingham, Alabama by @postmodernegro

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4 days ago

A GEOGRAPHY OF AWAKENING | PART 3: WHO WROTE THE CITY?

If the city can be read like a text, we have to ask who wrote it.

Who drew the boundaries? Who decided where the roads would go? Whose work built the wealth? Who could own, who had to rent, who was welcomed, and who was pushed aside?

The landscape did not write itself.

Birmingham, Bessemer, Ensley, Hueytown and the rest of West Jefferson County carry the marks of decisions about land, work, race and belonging. They also carry the lives of people whose names rarely appear on the buildings their labour made possible.

Every landscape has a memory. Learning that memory means asking whose signature is visible—and whose contribution has been erased.

This belongs to discipleship. Israel remembers slavery and deliverance. The prophets ask what respectable arrangements cost the poor. Our prayers for a place should make us more curious about how it became what it is.

This week’s practice: Choose one street, church, factory or vacant lot. Ask an elder what stood there before. Find an old photograph or map. Ask who made the decisions, who did the work, and who bore the cost.

Then ask what that history requires of us now.

Who wrote the city? And who gets to help write its next chapter?

Next: Part 4 — Learning to See the Powers.

#AGeographyOfAwakening #PublicTheology #Birmingham #WestJeffersonCounty #NeighborhoodHistory FaithAndJustice postmodernegro taken in Birmingham, Alabama by @postmodernegro

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4 days ago

A Geography of Awakening | Part 2: When Your City Becomes a Sacred Text

I’m continuing a series called A Geography of Awakening, an invitation to see our cities, neighborhoods, and communities with new eyes.

Revival asks, Is the church alive? Awakening asks, Can the church see?

Can we see beyond our sanctuaries and parking lots? Can we discern the histories beneath our feet, the powers shaping our neighborhoods, and the people whose stories too often go unheard?

Part 2: When Your City Becomes a Sacred Text invites us to read the places we inhabit as carefully as we read the Scriptures.

Because every street tells a story. Every abandoned building raises a question. Every neighborhood bears witness to decisions made, struggles endured, and possibilities not yet realized.

And perhaps learning to see where we live is part of learning to love our neighbors.

The city is speaking. Are we paying attention?

#AGeographyOfAwakening #SacredGeography #PublicTheology #FaithAndJustice #LoveOfNeighbor taken in Birmingham, Alabama by @postmodernegro

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6 days ago

Part 1. A Geography of Awakening. What if the place beneath your feet is trying to tell you something? Let the reader understand. May you have eyes to see and ears to hear in your city. #aGeographyOfAwakening taken in Birmingham, Alabama by @postmodernegro

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19 days ago

A Geography of Awakening: an 8 part series. #aGeographyOfAwakening taken in Birmingham, Alabama by @postmodernegro

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21 days ago

Some good weekend reads. #BlackMarxism #TheseTruths #AugustHNimtz #JillLepore taken in Birmingham, Alabama by @postmodernegro

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a month ago

White Christian nationalism is organizing people around a story that something has been taken from them, that their neighbors are to blame, and that reclaiming power will restore what has been lost.⁣
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One of our founding board members, @postmodernegro helps us understand how white Christian nationalism binds faith, fear, national identity, and political power, and why people of faith must learn to recognize its impact.⁣
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Our faith calls us to ask:⁣
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Who belongs?⁣
Who rules?⁣
Who benefits from our division?⁣
What kind of world are our beliefs producing?⁣
Whose freedom does our faith serve?⁣
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Understanding is part of our public witness. So is action.⁣
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Read. Save. Share. Bring these questions into your congregation, community, classroom, or organizing space.⁣
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Another way is possible. Let’s build it together.⁣
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#transformnetwork #faithandjustice #whitechristiannationalism #faithinaction #socialjustice by @postmodernegro

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a month ago

On this last day of Black August I’m reflecting on Harry Haywood’s Black Belt Nation Thesis. A thought: You cannot democratize Alabama without confronting the political economy of Black subordination; you cannot build durable working-class power without defeating white supremacy; and you cannot defeat white supremacy simply by appealing to racial tolerance…you have to organize people around the material structures that reproduce it. #BlackAugust #HarryHaywood #BlackBeltThesis by @postmodernegro

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2 months ago

With yesterday's special election having come and gone in Alabama, take this moment of pause to sit with @postmodernegro's reminder that democracy is not built on electoral maps. Link to the full article in the bio. by @postmodernegro

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2 months ago

With comrades studying and discussing the history of justice organizing in Alabama. Just checked this out from the Birmingham Public Library.

The deeper we dig, the clearer it becomes: radical traditions run deep in the heart of Dixie.

There’s a history here worth recovering—and continuing. @bhamdsa #AFROSOC #BlackAugust taken in Birmingham, Alabama by @postmodernegro

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2 months ago

taken in Birmingham, Alabama by @postmodernegro

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2 months ago