Krista Tippett has a powerful interview with Ruby Sales, an activist in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. I found it to be very powerful when I first heard it several years ago and it is no less relevant now.
How do we create a theology of whiteness? How are children taught to have an internal sense of their own self worth?
Ruby Sales observes that there is a spiritual crisis in white America. I wonder if we are up against that crisis now with both the fear and powerlessness we feel due to both Covid 19 and the years of racial injustice. What do those of us who are white Christians lean on when times are tough? The theology is there but our muscles to live with that which we cannot change are weak. And until we embrace a theology where all people are God’s beloved children, we will be missing one of the most transformative teachings of Jesus.
Sales asks:
How do we raise people up from disposability to essentiality? And this goes beyond the question of race. What is it that public theology can say to the white person in Massachusetts who’s heroin-addicted, because they feel that their lives have no meaning because of the trickle-down impact of whiteness in the world today? What do you say to someone who has been told that their whole essence is whiteness and power and domination, and when that no longer exists, then they feel as if they are dying?
There’s a spiritual crisis in white America. It’s a crisis of meaning. We talk a lot about black theologies, but I want a liberating white theology. I want a theology that speaks to Appalachia. I want a theology that begins to deepen people’s understanding about their capacity to live fully human lives and to touch the goodness inside of them, rather than call upon the part of themselves that’s not relational. Because there’s nothing wrong with being European-American. That’s not the problem. It’s how you actualize that history and how you actualize that reality. It’s almost like white people don’t believe that other white people are worthy of being redeemed.
Ruby Sales
Please join me as I seek to live and preach a deep and liberating white theology. Our faith tradition knows suffering and uncertainty as well as joy and resurrection. Let’s dig deep into God’s abiding love to discover the strength and wisdom when so much is out of our control.
revnancyduncan 
I’m very grateful to Nancy for sharing the word through Ruby Sales. It was my privilege to know Ruby during the years I was working on my doctorate at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass. (1992-95). Jonathan Daniels was currently a student there when in the summer of 1965 he was a voter registration volunteer in Alabama and was killed when he protected Ruby (then 17) when a deputy sheriff shot at her. He is considered a martyr on many church calendars. Ruby is cherished nation-wide as a liberation theologian. I add: a model and inspiration.