Reclaiming the Future by Re-Storying the Past
Reclaiming the Future by Re-Storying the Past (Theodore Hiebert, Cynthia D. Armster, Linda Boyce, Sijuwola Crawford, Phyllis Doggett, Timil Jones, Crystal E. Kettrell, Donna Jo Matthews, Toure Muhammed, Natasha L. Robinson): The book of Genesis is a collection of migration stories, but they have been hidden from us. Our aim is to unveil them here. We are used to reading these journeys as the journeys of shepherds following their flocks. But they are not. They are the migrations of Israel’s ancestors leaving their homes in Canaan, crossing administrative borders, and relocating as immigrants in neighboring countries.
These migration stories are interpreted here by members of the Sacred Memory Cohort at McCormick Theological Seminary, whose own ancestors were swept up in the transatlantic slave trade and then became part of the great migration north. Drawing on their own migration heritage, they explain how the ancestral wisdom in these stories may contribute to envisioning and building a world of justice and wholeness.