On Apr. 22 and 23, Daniel José Camacho will be coming to EMU to give a talk and host a workshop. Camacho is an Associate Web Editor at Sojourners and his writing has appeared in the Christian Century, America Magazine, ABC Religion & Ethics, TIME, The Guardian, and the Washington Post. He is a graduate of Calvin College and Duke Divinity School.
Camacho’s visit was organized by Bible and Religion adjunct professor Blair Wilner. Wilner and Camacho attended Duke Divinity School together, and Wilner wanted to give his students a chance to hear a new perspective on race and Christianity.
“Daniel writes extremely intelligently about the intersections between Christianity, race, and contemporary politics,” Wilner said. “One of the things that I like about him is that he always is figuring out a different angle at coming at a discussion. I read pretty much everything he’s written, because I always feel like I’ll learn something new.”
Bible and religion associate professor Peter Dula corroborated this feeling. “Whenever his name pops up on the Christian Century blog, I always make sure to read it,” Dula said. “I think he’s going to be really good. The students will really like him.”
The Tuesday lunch workshop, “Writing for a General/Digital Audience” will be a chance for students to learn more about publishing an article online, including brainstorming, pitching to editors, and execution. The talk on Monday evening, “My Personal Encounter With White Jesus,” is a public reading by Camacho of some of his works.
Wilner asked Camacho to think about questions having to do with race and Christian schools and higher education coming into these talks. “I think he has some interesting perspectives to share on how Christian higher education is thinking, with the administration and professors, but also the students. How are we thinking about race in these places? Especially asking questions like, ‘Who were these institutions built for?’ His reading will be addressing some of that,” Wilner said.
Junior Linsdey Acker also believes that it is important to be discussing race in relation to Christianity.
“The first main reason [I believe we should] is that Christians have historically used the scriptures as a way to justify their racism, so there’s a lot of historical harm and there’s a lot of historiacal trauma with that,” Acker said. “The second is that Jesus is someone who fought against oppression. He campagined against oppression … and that if we, as Christians, aren’t doing that, then we are missing a huge part of the point. If we’re not also trying to liberate the oppressed and undo systems and stuctures of racism, then we’re not listening to what Jesus actually said.”
Camacho said he is “looking forward to being on campus and engaging with the community at EMU.”
