62 actas del ix congreso católicos y vida pública Our understanding of history shapes our outlook on the world today in ways we might not even be aware of. Growing up, my knowledge of our nation’s story of race basically consisted of two great victories for racial equality: the end of slavery in the 1860s and the civil rights movement in the 1960s. That was the extent of the story I knew. The problem, when we’re stuck inside our own bubbles, is that even if we don’t feel hostility toward other races, we’re still disconnected from them, living in our own worlds. Perhaps very polite and pleasant to one another, but not in an authentic relationship. This disconnection is directly contrary to our call as Christians. And sometimes, what the world around us offers as a counterweight to disconnection is the redistribution of power, which may improve the circumstances when power has not been shared equitably, but a redistribution of power is not sufficient to heal the underlying relationships. Sometimes it replaces one form of alienation with another. Christians cannot rest easily with alienation, we have to build relationships that transcend our differences. This arises from our conception of community, our way of engaging the world around us, the way we connect with the lives we encounter. This is what Pope Francis was getting at in his encyclical Fratelli tutti, and the same themes emerge from the ministry of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I’ll walk through three themes that must animate our understanding of, and response to, our world today. First, we must have an accurate understanding of reality. In Fratelli tutti, Pope Francis writes that true community is possible only when it is built by those “who identify with the vulnerability of others,” and “shoulder the inevitable responsibilities of life as it is.” This may seem obvious, but Christians are having trouble following through on this today. American Christians are among the leading proponents of various conspiracy theories regarding the presidential election, the origins of COVID, secret plots to put tracking devices into vaccines, climate change as a fraud, child-trafficking rings, and various farfetched plots promulgated by the group Q-Anon. As Christians, we are supposed to engage and minister to the world as it is in order to help bring about the world as it could be. We are not allowed to retreat to a fantasy world as an escape from human suffering or disorder.
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