Kent Annan, author of Slow Kingdom Coming: Practices for Doing Justice, Loving Mercy, and Walking Humbly in the World, advocates taking justice work slow and engaging in justice service with the help of several spiritual practices. The practices he advocates, based on his personal experience, are being attentive to justice issues, engaging with humility, respecting the people served, positioning yourself as a partner with others to avoid paternalism, and engaging your mind in serious thinking about the reality on the ground of the chosen service.
Vocationally, Annan is a leader in Haiti Partners, an education organization in Haiti. From his background in the Christian tradition and his training at Princeton Theological Seminary, he shares his spiritual and justice experience in the messy world we live in. He reflects on his experience and uses the language of the Christian tradition to link that experience to his readers in the conservative Christian community.
Based on this book, Annan is a spiritual translator. He uses the language of the Christian tradition to communicate with conservative Christians in their vocational endeavors for justice in their communities and vocations. But, he also is emphasizing the universals of human interaction. The practices and cautions that he embraces for the Christian community are universal in application, and with some further translation, can be embraced by the whole range of the Christian Community, Jewish community, Islamic community, and Buddhist community.
The helpful appendix to the book provides study resources focusing on the interaction of these practices.
Quakers: We are all in the translation business. We all need to practice translation. Annan is particularly effective for translation in the Christian tradition. With thoughtful reading, his experience can communicate to other communities as well.
Questions:
- How do Quakers use language distinctively to translate understanding into practice for Quaker youth?
Resources:
- Kent Annan, Slow Kingdom Coming: Practices for Doing Justice, Loving Mercy, and Walking Humbly in the World (2016)