The Blindness of Whiteness Adult Week 4

A 6-ish week Adult Education class Beginning Sunday, March 2, 10:45 a.m. Our presenter, Alisa May Johnson, grew up in Lexington, KY, where she lived for almost three decades. She attended high school history classes there and took KY state history from the University of Kentucky. Nevertheless, it wasn’t until another 30 years had passed that Alisa, on a trip back “home” in 2019, learned that Lexington had been the site of a booming slave market. This fact sparked Alisa’s desire to learn racial history, which she had never been taught at school or home. However, with the murders of multiple Black people during Covid, including of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, KY, her desire morphed into an obsession centered around one question: Why isn’t the white church stopping this racial holocaust? At that time Alisa was enrolled in a graduate theology program at Whitworth University and spent the next few years using class assignments to wrestle with this question. She decided to write a thesis on it by narrowing the focus to her home turf of central Kentucky. Alisa graduated in June 2024 after spending the last year researching and writing her thesis. The first session of the six-week class will introduce Alisa and the journey that led her to where she is today. Alisa has been quietly attending Covenant since early summer 2024 and is looking forward to getting to know more of you and to becoming engaged with this church as a community. Course Outline: WEEK 1: Who I am and why I wrote my MA thesis on this subject WEEK 2: Slavery in Kentucky WEEK 3: Historical and Antebellum Thought about Christianity and Slavery WEEK 4: White Churches and Their Relationship to Slavery in Central Kentucky WEEK 5: Asking Questions of Scripture WEEK 6: Corporate Lament