The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power returned for its second season, bringing viewers back to a sprawling story inspired by the works of J.R.R. Tolkien.
“You do not want to be beholden to anything but God and your moral values,” Butler told Sojourners. “If I see the Democratic Party running astray from that, then I will criticize them. If they ever became a party of violence and mayhem and chaos, like the Republican Party has become, I would pray to God that I have the courage that so many ‘Never Trump’ Republicans have had. Stepping out in the crowd is an exceptionally hard thing to do.”
Antonia Can Tuil still remembers the hunger of her childhood distinctly.
And in later years, as a mother, when she surveyed her failed crops, she felt the weight of despair knowing her own children would not have enough to eat.
Anyone crossing the U.S.-Mexico border faces a journey fraught with violence and danger. But for women and children, that journey is even more treacherous. Not only are many fleeing violence at home — including gender-based violence — they also experience higher rates of violence en route. Torture, mutilation, sexual violence, femicide,disappearances, and additional health complications are common occurrences for female migrants making their way north.
In her forthcoming book, Films for All Seasons: Experiencing the Church Year at the Movies, Abby Olcese guides the church through the liturgical season via spiritual reflection on movies. Rather than tell readers how a movie is to be interpreted, Olcese guides participants on watching, considering, and discussing 27 films, each aligned with the liturgical calendar.
Loosely inspired by the experiences of Latoya Ammons in Gary, Ind., Netflix’s The Deliverance follows single mother Ebony Jackson as she battles demons, her past, and systems entrenched with racism and sexism — all to save her family.
The works of J.R.R. Tolkien — The Lord of the Rings chief among them — have been a passion of mine since elementary school. The story of how four lowly hobbits, Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin, come to change the entire course of their world’s history through their decency, courage, and stubborn perseverance still resonates as powerfully for me today as it did then. There’s a “root for the underdog” theme in Tolkien that resonates with my love of working for social justice, and explains why I’ve always been drawn to biblical figures like Moses and Mary, mother of Jesus, who came from humble beginnings and accepted God’s call to play a key role in transforming the world.
A couple years ago, urban farmer DeAndress Green drove Uber and DoorDash for 10 hours straight and then returned to her home on the southside of St. Louis struggling to breathe.
“I thought I was having an asthma attack,” she said.
Public transportation shapes our worship, our theology, and how we live out Christ’s call to love our neighbor. If we are to learn to love our neighbor, we must then ask who they are, as the expert of the law did in Luke 10:29. Jesus responded with the Parable of the Good Samaritan and invited the man to go and do likewise — to be the one who shows mercy. To be a neighbor is to show mercy, which requires a kind of knowing. I learned who my neighbors were by taking the bus. By being with them, I grew in knowledge of them. By growing in knowledge of them, I grew in love for them.
Travel back in time with me to the early 2000s: Celebrities were openly fat-shamed in tabloids, and supermarkets were overrun by all things “low” — low-calorie, low-fat, low-carb, low-sodium, or low-sugar. Diets like Atkins, paleo, keto, raw foods, and juice cleanses abounded. TV shows like “The Biggest Loser” and “My 600-lb Life” were used to paint fat people as lazy, undisciplined, and disgusting.