Podcast   10-20-2017

When the Values Voter Summit welcomed Donald Trump, they embraced a man who is the "consummate worshiper of money, sex, and power."

the Web Editors 10-20-2017

Global pollution accounts for approximately 9 million premature deaths every year, according to a report by The Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health.

The comprehensive study found that pollution is linked to 1-in-6 deaths globally — accounting for three times more than AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined, The Guardian reports.

Helen Salita 10-20-2017

If and when a survivor manages to leave an abusive situation, they still face many hurdles in their immigrant community. Some fear that stories of abuse may threaten whatever positive image the community has worked hard to shore up in a time of fear and distrust. Aisha Rahman, Executive Director of KARAMAH, a group of Muslim women lawyers representing human rights, told a story of a Somali woman living in the small town of Lewistown, Maine. After counseling and support, she finally felt able to testify about the sexual assault she experienced, yet only two men in her community were able to interpret for her. During her testimony, the men translated her stories in much softer language (“He was mean to her”), and themselves repeatedly asked her questions like, “Do you really want to expose your husband? Do you really want to expose our community?

the Web Editors 10-20-2017

2. On the Political Uses of Evil

The trouble with contemporary political uses of evil isn’t the concept itself, but rather the intentional vagueness thrust upon it by an era without any well-defined theory of the good.”

Most visitors to events in Germany marking this year’s 500th anniversary of the Reformation, however, probably didn’t expect to find an exhibition setting out just how extensively the Nazis used Luther to justify their anti-Semitism and nationalism.

“The administration is going to challenge it [the court’s halt] and continue to try to make sure it [the ban] happens, ” said Isra Chaker, one of the speakers at the rally and a campaigns advisor at Oxfam America focusing on refugees.

the Web Editors 10-19-2017

In the aftermath of a Oct. 14 truck bombing that killed over 300 people in Mogadishu, Somalia, thousands of people took to the capital's streets in response to mayor Thabit Abdi's call to unity, according to The Guardian. 

Jim Wallis 10-19-2017

A widely-respected white evangelical leader recently expressed to me his personal agony over how “white evangelicalism has destroyed the ‘evangel’ of Jesus — the bringing of ‘good news’ to the poor.” Another leader of a top national evangelical organization told me in a personal conversation that evangelical support of Trump “will destroy our integrity for at least a generation.”

More than 60 years ago, the divinity school denied him admission because he is black. Speaking at a service in Goodson Chapel, he asked: “What is it that God would have Duke Divinity School do in light of that history? For if one is not honest about that history, one can’t be fully present.”

Dhanya Addanki 10-18-2017

4. Do not wait to have a daughter to finally respect women.

You can respect us because we are human, with all of the glory, nuance, and mess that comes with it. You do not need to imagine a woman as your mother or aunt or cousin to respect her. You can respect her because of the soul that she carries and the life that she lives. Her relationship to you, her partner, her father, or anyone else should not be what defines your respect.