Kelley Nikondeha

Writer, speaker, and community development practitioner, Kelley Nikondeha (Defiant: What the Women of Exodus Teach Us about Freedom) offers a timely and inspiring look at the idea of jubilee in the Bible, when every fifty years, the enslaved were set free, debts were forgiven, and the and given rest, or returned to its original owners. Today, most consider jubilee to be aspirational, mere metaphor, an impractical, ill-advised economic tool, and many theologians and economists doubt it was ever practiced. And they would all be be wrong. Recent scholarship, archeological records, tell a different story. And contemporary practitioners are now showing its robust capabilities for resetting economic systems and turning to more just economic practices. Jubilee is a curious yet captivating economic program woven throughout various parts of Scripture, which includes both instruction and poetry about debt cancellation, land return, and freedom from debt slavery. But over the last century it has often been consigned to the canon of utopian thinking. In non-religious spaces we sometimes hear of proposals like the Jubilee 2000 campaign, an endeavor to eliminate the debt of the most under-developed and heavily indebted nations. A large part of the experience of being human, of struggling to survive, of our engagement in culture and society is wrestling with debt, individually and collectively. For civilization that predated Rome that also included a view to debt cancellation, a tool at the ready for ancient civilizations. When Jesus arrived on the scene, he announced his own Jubilee Campaign, drawing from the priests and prophets, giving rise to a fresh conversation around debt and economics. Jubilee is a conversation that Nikondeha has continuously engaged in, in her work as a liberation theologian in partnership with her husband, a community development practitioner, banker, and organizer in Burundi (East Africa). From a careful consideration of the history of debt cancellation in the Bronze and Early Iron Ages and insight into the jubilee canon in Scripture, Nikondeha provides a new perspective and practice sprouting from the purpose of debt relief in antiquity, to offering of better conversations about our economic life, not just abroad, not just at national and community levels, but at home as well. Jubilee offers us principals, purpose and practices to explore together, a surprising array of tools to implement, test, and evaluate in various economic situations as we face a feral world where precarious economies abound.

When we picture the first Advent, we see Mary and Joseph huddled by a manger. We picture Gabriel, magi, and shepherds tending their flocks. A shining star against a midnight sky. But this harmonized version has lifted the Advent story out of its context--those who experienced the first Advent had to travel through great darkness to reach the hope that shining star announced. Trusted scholar and community organizer Kelley Nikondeha takes us back, to where the landscape of Palestine is once again the geographic, socioeconomic, and political backdrop for the Advent story. Reading the Advent narratives of Luke and Matthew anew, in their original context, changes so much about how we see the true story of resistance, abusive rulers and systems of oppression, and God coming to earth. In Luke, Rome and Caesar loom, and young Mary's strength and resolve shine brightly as we begin to truly understand what it meant for her to live in the tumultuous Galilee region. In Matthew, through Joseph's point of view, we see the brutality of Herod's rule and how the complexities of empire weighed heavily on the Holy Family. We bear witness to the economic hardship of Nazareth, Bethlehem, and the many villages in between--concerns about daily bread, crushing debt, land loss, and dispossession that ring a familiar echo to our modern ears. Throughout her explorations, Nikondeha features the stories of modern-day Palestinians, centering their voices to help us meet an Advent recognizable for today. This thought-provoking examination invites us into a season of discovery, one that is realistic and honest, and that still wonders at the goodness of God's grace.

There would be no Moses, no crossing of the Red Sea, no story of breaking the chains of slavery if it weren't for the women in the Exodus narrative. Women on both sides of the Nile exhibited a subversive strength resisting Pharaoh and leading an entire people to freedom. Defiant explores how the Exodus women summoned their courage, harnessed their intelligence, and gathered their resources to enact justice in many small ways and overturned an empire. Women find themselves in similar circumstances today. The Women's March stirred the conscience of a nation and prompted women to organize with and for their neighbors, it is worth reflecting on the resistance literature of Exodus and what it has to offer women. Defiant is about the deep work women do to create conditions for liberation in their church, community, and country. The women of Exodus defied Pharaoh, raised Moses, and plundered Egypt. We are invited to consider what the midwives, mothers of Moses, Miriam, Zipporah and her sisters demonstrate under the oppressive regime of Pharaoh and what it might unlock for us as we imagine our mandate under modern systems of injustice. Kelley Nikondeha presents a fresh paradigm for women, highlighting a biblical mandate to join the liberation work in our world. Women's work involves more than tending to our own family and home. According to Exodus, it moves us beyond the domestic territory and into relationship with women across the river, confronting injustice and working to liberate our neighborhoods so all mothers and children are free. Nikondeha calls women to continue to be active agents in heralding liberation as we organize and march together for one another's freedom.

Adoption is one of the most radically inclusive aspects of God's kingdom. All of us belong to God's family-Jesus as God's son and the rest of us as his adopted children. In Adopted Kelley Nikondeha explores how the Christian concept of adoption into God's family can broaden our sense of belonging. Drawing on her own story as both an adopted child and an adoptive mother, Nikondeha invites readers to a rich, biblically grounded understanding of adoption that reframes the way we perceive family, friends, and those in need of rescue. As Nikondeha unpacks the implications of adoption-and especially its potential to cross socioeconomic and ethnic boundaries-she offers new ways to approach conversations about family, adoption, connection, and the mystery of what it means to belong.