Travelling from Edinburgh to Brighton, following our third prophetic activist bootcamp Bella Cross reflets on the energy and encouragement they feel connecting with young justice-seeking Christians.
Our activist bootcamps aim to bring together young Christians from a diversity of backgrounds and explore together our call to the prophetic, and to disrupt injustice that doesn’t align with God’s vision for the world.
In their own words, we’ve smashed it:
It’s challenging to continuously stand before your peers (I am only just 23) and encourage them to throw themselves into a life of seeking social justice using their unique gifts and talents. I have the same feelings of inadequacy, of being paralyzed with not knowing where to start in such a broken world, of being tired and angry at the lack of change. I talk a lot about hope – it is after all my middle name - without always feeling it. But hope is contagious.
I’m grateful and amazed by how many people show up eager to learn and do more. I think young people are often disparaged as being selfish and too hooked on their phones. The reality is they are showing up, prophetically calling out the UK’s complicity in the war in Gaza (deemed 'plausibly genocidal' by an international court), the continued colonization and extraction of wealth by Global North countries of the Global South, the impunity with which fossil fuel companies destroy God’s creation to enrich themselves. We see and are awakened to the horrors of settler arson attacks in the West Bank on Palestinians, of children exploited in mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo to make our phones, of indigenous communities documenting the destruction of their historic homelands – and we can’t ignore it. There may be different issues God has placed on our hearts, but we are united by an unwavering belief that we must act, we must provoke and become a channel for God’s disturbance.
I learn so much working with other young activists and lead these events knowing I will leave with more than I have given.
From guest speakers at our bootcamps who teach about the theology of solidarity and justice, to the young Christians who show up to prayerfully protest outside the headquarters of companies arming Israel I get the opportunity to witness people putting their faith in action.
Many young Christians leave our bootcamps with new friends, passionate about making change, and their renewed belief that there’s a role for them to play. I wish you could all be there too but since you can’t, here’s a video reflecting on the London bootcamp:
You'll be part of a community of like-minded campaigners, where you can connect on shared ideas and interests.