Stephen Seufert 7-10-2015
Pope Francis in Quito, Ecuador

Pope Francis correctly points out that while “we are not yet tearing one another apart … we are tearing apart our common home," and that not defending our common home “is a grave sin."

The scientific community, Pope Francis believes, “realizes what the poor have long told us: Harm, perhaps irreversible harm, is being done to the ecosystem," Through human-made decisions that resulted in pollution and exploitation, Pope Francis declared, "The earth, entire peoples and individual persons are being brutally punished."

Cindy Brandt 7-10-2015
Image via Sergey Nivens/Shutterstock

What I am learning is that the new normal is not that I no longer experience God, but that God is meeting me in new ways. The new normal is that I don’t need to hear people play guitar telling me to feel God’s love from a stage. I find God’s love in much less conspicuous places, from the stranger behind me who felt too awkward to shake my hand, to the silly doodles my kids were making on the church bulletin. The new normal is that I no longer find authority in celebrity pastors preaching at me, but I do find it listening to unheard voices of small bloggers and older people who aren’t social media savvy.

The new normal is that I hear the "Roman Road" gospel preached and find it dull and superficial, and yet feel overwhelming conviction in the cross lived out by people who forgive their enemies.

The new normal is that although God has not changed, I have changed. And like a parent who stops cooing in baby talk, God is starting to speak in new, fresh ways to me.   

Elders time of blessing, The Summit. Image via Sojourners.

Much more than an event or a conference, The Summit was the growing edge of the beloved community — a gathering of emerging leaders with deep reach into neighborhoods and communities that are outcast but vibrant, marginalized but standing tall. It was creative and radically inclusive, bringing together people with very different experiences in the struggle for a more just and peaceful world.

To be included as an elder for such an event was a humbling and lovely experience — even more so to share that experience with such wise and faithful disciples as C.T. Vivian and Eliseo Medina, Heidi Neumark and Terry LeBlanc, Katherine Marshall and Roy Sano. I gained much more from each conversation than I could possibly have given!

James VanOosting 7-10-2015
Image via Peter O'Sullivan/Flickr

When I first noticed the figure, I assumed it must be a man or a woman. On this day, however, something made me stop to look more carefully. Schmaltz’s sculpture is realistic in form though slightly diminutive in scale. I stepped in closer to inspect its details. I reached out to touch the supplicant hand. The sculptor probably wanted such a response — appreciating the object while objectifying what it represents. After all, one can’t stop and stare at an actual street person, stepping back and forth to gaze intently. One certainly can’t touch that person’s skin to see what it feels like. This particular art object is unusual because it mimics live human beings who sit nearby. The juxtaposition packs a wallop. At least, it does for me.

Greg Williams 7-09-2015
Image via Steven Frame/Shutterstock

Today, at 4:00 p.m. EST, Governor Haley of South Carolina intends to sign a bill to take down the Confederate battle flag that is currently flying over the state capitol. The flag itself will be removed at 10:00 a.m. on Friday, and moved to a museum.

Calls for the removal of the Confederate flag, seen as a symbol of racism and oppression, have been buildingsince the murder of nine African-American men and women at Emmanuel AME in Charleston, S.C., last month. Dylann Roof, the accused murderer who is alledged to have been motivated by racial hate, has several pictures online posing with the flag as a symbol of white supremacy.

The flag itself increasingly been seen as a symbol of hate, even among traditionally conservative white southern Christians, with Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention going so far as to say that “the cross and the Confederate flag cannot co-exist without one setting the other on fire.” 

This decision to take down the flag made its way through a marjoity vote in the South Carolina House earlythis morning. The vote comes nearly two weeks after Bree Newsome, a Christian activist, took down the flag herself in an act of civil disobedience on June 27. For her, this was an act “not only in defiance of those who enslaved my ancestors in the southern United States, but also in defiance of the oppression that continues against black people globally in 2015.”

Jim Wallis 7-09-2015
Image via Andrew Cline/Shutterstock

When members of the House Republican leadership met with several evangelical and Catholic leaders in 2014, they promised to our faces that they would bring serious immigration reform to the House floor for a vote. They failed to live up to that promise, deciding instead to cave to their white-washed right wing base. Some Republican members admitted to us that many of their constituents were expressing clear racial biases.

I believe Donald Trump is deliberately and directly appealing to that white racist core of the Republican Party, and that’s why he is currently number two in the Republican polls. He is selling racism and he is winning.

I know and trust Republicans and conservative friends who reject such racism — want to purge it from their party — and long for a wider, more diverse Republican Party for the future. Indeed, the Republican votes, and even impassioned speeches, to take down the Confederate flag in South Carolina show a tale of two Republican parties — and that is a hopeful contrast to the racist elements of the party to which Trump is selling himself.

It is time for them to stand up to Donald Trump and what he is selling.

Abby Olcese 7-09-2015
Screenshot via 'Moonrise Kingdom' trailer/YouTube

Actor and writer Dylan Marron is the creator of Every Single Word, a popular tumblr and video series dedicated to exposing the lack of racial diversity in mainstream Hollywood films.

For the series, Marron, a biracial native of Venezuela best known for his work on the cult-favorite podcast Welcome to Night Vale, chooses a well-known, recent film and edits it down to only the lines spoken by people of color. The results are damning. None of the videos in Marron’s series last over a minute. Some, like Noahand Into the Woods, which feature no actors of color at all, simply cut directly to black.

Marron spoke with Sojourners about the origins of the project, the long-term effects of poor diversity representation onscreen, and systemic struggles facing people of color in the entertainment industry.

David Gushee 7-09-2015
sergign / Shutterstock

Despite threats from some conservative Christian dissenters, civil disobedience may turn out to be an irrelevant response to gay marriage.

To understand why, we have to think seriously about what civil disobedience really is.

Here’s a good definition: If a government mandates what religious people believe God forbids, or forbids what religious people believe God mandates, civil disobedience may be required.

In the first case civil disobedience involves the refusal to do what government commands, and in the second case it involves the continued practice of an act that government has banned.

Could this apply to the new legalization of gay marriage nationwide?

Ryan Herring 7-09-2015
Image via Lukas Maverick Greyson/Shutterstock

But what does it mean to wait on the Lord? We are actually waiting, in a chronological sense, because as humans we are bound by time. But was there more to what the prophets meant by this? 

When asked about the prophet's insistence on waiting on the Lord my father's response was, "...In general they are imploring us to not get our desires ahead of God's intentions. Alignment between our will and God's design is critical for our work to bear fruit. Therefore, it is not a temporal wait, but a plea to put God's will first."

This perspective frees us from the bondage of our impatience, because it becomes less about when and more about how. Waiting on the Lord is not something done passively. Much action is demanded from us. The Hebrew words used to mean "to wait" in passages such as Isaiah 30:18, Micah 7:7, and Habakkuk 2:1-3 could also be used to mean "to put hope in."

Jon Huckins 7-08-2015
Image via Dmytro Vietrov/Shutterstock

After five days in the hospital, filled with overwhelming joy, paralyzing fear, and complete exhaustion in the wake of the birth of our twins, I finally found a moment to walk outside the florescent lights and sit under the bright moon. Sitting on a small patch of grass outside the hospital doors, the reality of being a father to four kids finally hit me. I was both overwhelmed and overjoyed by the gift and responsibility of raising four kids in a world so desperately in need of mustard seeds of hope that one day blossom into healing and beauty.

So as I sit in relative comfort and begin to dream big dreams for my kids, I am struck by the reality that most fathers around the globe are forced to welcome their kids into a world where there is no "ladder" to climb because it has been knocked out from under them by broken systems that are breaking people. A world where many kids are born into families fleeing violent persecution and being nursed on the trauma of war in battered refugee camps — places where the thought of hope is a distant second to simply fighting to survive. A world where one’s value is more closely associated with gender (male) than with the beautiful uniqueness inherent in every new life. 

But this is also a world pregnant with possibilities. A world where former enemies move beyond their past, share tables, and begin to imagine a future together. A world where the blossoms of new life begin to sprout in the shadowy corners of forgotten neighborhoods. A world where the diversity of God’s kingdom begins to awaken our eyes and hearts to the new world God is making. 

It is in this world — a world both beautiful and broken — that I offer this prayer over my four kids.