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Sandhay Jha. Image courtesy Calice Press.
Audacious Devotion: Peace and Justice Activist Sandhya Jha
March 18, 2021
Reverend Sandhya Rani Jha a peace activist reflects on how her work with people of different races, ethnicities, and backgrounds informed her devotionals and how listening more closely across boundaries can bring about peace, justice, and a deeper relationship with God.
Oakland Peace Center sign. Courtesy Oakland Peace Center
Audacious Devotion: Peace and Justice Activist Sandhya Jha March 18, 2021
Reverend Sandhya Rani Jha is a peace activist with more than  20 years of experience in interfaith relations. As founder and director of the Oakland Peace Center, she navigates between 40 different organizations to create equity, access, and dignity in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her new book, “Liberating Love Daily Devotional,” is steeped in the Christian tradition but intended for people of all faiths who want to more intimately encounter the divine.

In part one of our interview, Rev. Sandhya Jha describes the major influences that led her to peacemaking -- with a stop in the halls of Congress and a stint in the pulpit at a church with 10 members in Oakland California.

Then she describes the experience of writing by her father’s deathbed and how that shaped her reflections. “I feel like the time has come for a devotional that reconnects us to the stories of our spiritual ancestors and gives us some resources to take on empire,” she says, “and to figure out how to show up for each other in the midst of scary times like these.”

Wrapping up the interview, Rev. Jha unpacks her peacemaking toolkit, revealing the importance of respect, listening, remembering, and humility. And she gets candid about the cost of being self-sacrificial and how it feeds an oppressive system that extracts labor from women of color and how she is being called to examine the high cost of being what she calls “the bargain basement” racial justice trainers.

Rev. Sandhya Rani Jha, founder and executive director of the Oakland Peace Center and author most recently of Liberating Love Daily Devotional: 365 Love Notes from God from Chalice Press. She holds a Masters of Divinity and Public Policy from the University of Chicago.



Liberating Love Daily Devotional: 365 Love Notes from God  by Sandhya Rani Jha

Liberating Love Daily Devotional: 365 Love Notes from God
Chalice Press




The song Sad Trio is by Incompetech/Kevin MacLeod.
The songs Liptis, Mind Bondy Mind and Set the Tip Jar

are by Blue Dot Sessions.
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