The Anti-Greed Gospel

Foley’s work in The Anti-Greed Gospel, comes out of years of historical study on the lynching era in U.S. history, spanning from the post Civil War years to the 1940s. During this period, mob rule in the form of lynchings became common place, especially within the southern states that formerly made up the Confederate states in the Civil War. Lynching was used as a means of punishment, but ultimately something much more devious...

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Learning and Unlearning

~By Sarah L. Sanderson~ To keep learning about how to repair society-wide harms. To keep unlearning implicit biases towards individuals. Both of these are difficult challenges that require intentionality and work. While living in Oregon, I wrote a book about my journey of uncovering how my ancestors had contributed to historical racism in that state. But recently, my family moved across the country to Maryland, where I’m beginning the process all over again. I’m now learning about the history of this place, and...

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From Displacement to Restoration: Portland’s Black Community and the Struggle Against Racism

~By Kimberly S. Moreland~ Racism plays a significant role in undergirding poverty and other injustices in the United States. Authors Goldblum and Shaddox, in their seminal work, Broke in America: Seeing Understanding, and Ending U.S. Poverty, say that racism and poverty are each other's evil twin. This combination creates many forms of oppression targeting our most impoverished and marginalized citizens. What is behind this dynamic duo, Malcolm Foley says, is that greed undergirds racism and oppression. Foley’s book, The Anti-Greed Gospel; Why the Love of Money Is the Root of Racism and How the Church Can Create a New Way Forward, continues by saying that greed is insidious because it is a sin that we are conditioned to both ignore and justify. Unfortunately, Portland, and the entire state of Oregon, is no stranger to poverty as well as racist policies...

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