Here’s the sermon I preached with the people of Central Church of the Brethren this past Sunday. It’s behind the paywall - for paid subscribers only - as a way of acknowledging and thanking those of you who support my writing with your dollars in addition to your attention. In this season of variable income and vocational transition, I appreciate you.
Sermon: John 20: 19-31
Central Church of the Brethren
April 7, 2024
Do you know the name Anne Braden?
Anne was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1924 to a middle-class white family, and grew up in the fullness of what being white in the south meant - segregation and white supremacy. She left Kentucky to go to college at Randolph-Macon Women’s College just down the road in Lynchburg. During those years she had what she calls “a conversion of almost religious intensity” that felt like “turning myself inside out and upside down.” The conversion was about how she understood segregation, white supremacy, race and justice.
The conversion shifted the course of Anne’s life. She moved back to Louisville and worked as a journalist, and she and her husband Carl became some of the most active and visible white allies of the Black Freedom Movement in the American South. The Bradens were powerful and reviled. Anne was arrested multiple times and, when she and Carl purchased a home in a white Louisville suburb as a favor for their Black friends Andrew and Charlotte Wade, couple was charged and tried with SEDITION.
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