Blessings! Being afraid and wanting to be great and highly well accomplished are polar extremes. It makes no difference be it nations or their peoples in arts, sciences, faiths, politics, universities, media, literature, industries, in cities or farms. If you want to hit it big, you cannot afford to be afraid. You must take risks. You must be bold. You must be unafraid. You must be unafraid of what people will think of you. You must be unafraid of what people will say to you and about you be it in your face or behind your back. In my faith tradition, Christianity, Bohoffer called it The Cost of Discipleship, King, The Strength to Love, and Holy Bible Old Testament Esther said “If I perish, I perish, “while New Testament Apostle Paul said “As for me, to live is Christ, to die is gain. “ Even for those who believed in God though more so in science like the great physicist Albert Einstein could say this about the need to overcome the impediment of fear in pursuit of achievement even when it comes to being a victorious religious person :

“The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.”

What does all have to do with living unafraid in  21st century societies born out of the horrors of the massive historical European enslavement of Africans or what I call African Slavery Legacy Societies in which we are so afraid to treat each other with equal dignity, where we don’t know how to be authentic with those like us and especially different from us, where we are ok with bigotry and inequality as long as I am ok, where faith, religion, and spirituality are about loving those who look like me and giving license to hate those not like me? How do we  become so unafraid to speak in body language, words, and deeds for justice for all no matter their ancestry, skin color or religion or gender that we no longer become the victims of the powerful who manipulate our biased fears for their economic, political, and divisive sociocultural gains?One way is to begin to promote  and do authentic though initially difficult often painful transparent conversations to overtime expose, discredit, and move away from the long embedded fears which keep African Slavery Legacy Societies so divided unable to reach their full potential no matter how they may seem to be developed but never can be due to their waste of so much human capital through not only massive ignorance but the massive arrogance of the dominant in their superiority complexes and the arrogance of the oppressed resting in the comforts of their degrading dehumanization inferiority complexes.

This line of “need for unafraid liberation for all us to do and think in African Slavery Legacy Societies conversations ,”is especially important for the month of February. My social justice ministry think tank ASARPI (asarpi.org) has declared February to be the month for remembering, sustaining, and starting local, national, and global conversations about the 400 years global African slave trade and consequential institution and societal developments, its Abolition movements, and events, and Post-Slavery dire circumstances and conditions with authentic rather than symbolic,marginal otherwise superficial empowerment cases and solutions. February is selected for a number of reasons for several reasons.

First as a nonaligned truth seeking justice global Pan-African and  growing Pan-Asian hybrid mostly virtual policy advocacy think tank, ASARPI is globally headquartered in Mauritius.Until  2021 when in the US Juneteenth Day became federal public holiday, Mauritius was the only African Slavery Legacy Society in the world which had a public holiday commemorating the abolition of Africa derived slavery. It was created by the British in 1833.Second, Mauritius is the only nation building a inter-continental history of African enslavement government funded museum.

Third, begun in February 1926 as Negro History Week by the eminent African American historian Carter G. Woodson, now in the United States  since the 1970s and eventually in Canada , it is the month of February. Woodson’s major motivation in selecting February is it is the birthday month of the American Civil War (1860-1864)President Abraham Lincoln (the 12th) signer of the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation and advocate for the 14th US constitutional amendment legally ensuring the voting and other African American citizenship rights and of Frederick Douglass,  nineteenth century America’s greatest justice African American leader(the 14th).

lf you take at least a peek at our website(asarpi.org) you will see a pop up invitation to our ASARPI February event kicking off this important month conversation then which will occur monthly through December 2026 and we hope in so many empowering ways for years to come until all we human beings African descendant and otherwise are free from the chains which are dehumanizing the humanity of all of us. It is because the well deeply embedded systemic, structure, perceptions, stereotypes, behaviors, and unconscious thoughts which allow the perpetrators, victims, and survivors of global and societal Africa derived slavery, abolition, and post-slavery begin to disintegrate in cause and effect as we engage in unafraid transparent conversations both nonverbal and verbal as we begin to embrace and empower each other in love as we caste away all fears of each other as the human beings all made and kept in the image and grace and mercy of God.


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Please Come!

Love, Justice, Peace,and Joy,
John
Senior Pastoral Facilitator
Faith and Justice Sunday Conversations: Notes and Reflections
Director, ASARPI asarpi.org
February 2,2025 copyright
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” Prof John” H Stanfield

Faith and Justice Sunday Conversations is a global Internet/social media-based  multiethnic ecumenical and interfaith  spiritual direction ministry without walls headquartered in Africa and in the United States  for everyone though is, especially for devout people of God without a faith community  home ,faith community attending devout worshippers interested in discussing and effectively addressing difficult and challenging  justice and ethical concerns in their  lives,families, and communities; and for  those who do not believe in the Abrahamic God but strive to live good justice oriented moral lives. We are now over 3,000  in number and growing daily through the grace and mercy of God.