About Toward Solidarity

How might we reweave the becoming of our own selves and systems toward the beloved community? 

What does it look like to seek shalom in the wake of colonialism and under the empire of racial capitalism?

What practices allow us to find freedom (from shame, whiteness, burnout, religiosity, patriarchy, alienation) in the midst of fighting for freedom?

How might we begin to do theology that presses all the way from the realms of the unknowable into the local soils of daily praxis?

If the way of Jesus is to have a hope and a future, it must rediscover itself as a practice of solidarity. This is the journey I’ve been on — from a white nationalist evangelical growing up in rural Texas to a contemplative faith-rooted organizer of the solidarity economy — and it’s the one I explore in these reflections. I’m a practitioner first and foremost, trying to build radical alternatives and pass transformative policies that matter, weaving honestly human community. But all good praxis needs to continually re-find and refine itself in reflection and community.

These sentences are the stories, theory, and theology emerging in response to my stumbling efforts to move through life in solidarity with the oppressed and in communion with Jesus the Christ. Over time, the Venn Diagram of those two ways of being have come to look more and more like a circle. I hope you will become part of my community as we move deeper into the spiritual and political work of liberation.

Who is Nathan Davis Hunt?

I'm a faith-rooted organizer and grassroots community developer who’s put down roots in Boston (Massachusett, Nipmunc, and Wampanoag land) by way of Texas, Colorado and California. I’m interested in how we operationalize justice: how we embody the outpouring of Trinitarian love for liberation and communion. What are the principles, tools, and tactics for creating a world in which, as Peter Maurin would say, it is easier to be good? How might such worlds find purchase in the landscapes of our inner depths? I try to think theologically, whatever that means, about all the relationships, socioeconomic and personal and ideological and ecological, that make up life in a community wrapped up in a complex society embedded in creation. This is the dialogue and the kinds of encounters we’re pursuing here.

My day job is developing a co-op that's enabling community institutions to collaborate through group purchasing that supports their operational health. We try to redirect the money we organize toward racial reparations and the restoration of creation. We see it as part of building the solidarity economy.

I’ve written for Red Letter Christians, Macrina, Geez, the Journal of Urban Missions, Directions Journal and more.

Before this, I was the Director of Economic Justice then Deputy Director at the Interfaith Alliance of Colorado. During that beautiful season of life, I co-founded Colorado Village Collaborative, co-created and led the Congregation Land Campaign, a housing/homelessness justice rabble-rouser, co-chaired a state-wide ballot initiative that kicked payday lending out of Colorado (are you sensing a “co-” theme yet?!), and had the opportunity to fight for policy changes on a number of racial and economic justice fronts particularly on housing justice and homelessness. I studied theology and community development/organizing at a little Mennonite seminary in Fresno, CA. There’s a decent chance that if the weather’s nice, I’m lounging on my front porch with a coffee or beer reading a book. 

Thanks for stopping by! Hope you’ll join this stumbling journey toward solidarity.

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Notes on reweaving an engaged spiritual life of communion, care, and collective liberation. A community for muddied mystics stumbling toward the abolition of plantations, rekindling our humanity, and creating worlds where it is easier to love.

People

Faith-rooted organizer, solidarity economy weaver. Mystic wannabe dismantling plantations within and out. Glutton for trails & books.