In 1980, for the first time in 1,000 years, more believers following the babe in Bethlehem lived in the global South than the North, and in four decades since then this has accelerated. Growth in Latin America means 600 million exchange “Feliz Navidad,” or “Feliz Natal” (Portuguese) during these days in crowded Catholic cathedrals, megachurches, and Pentecostal storefronts. This is an increase of 10 million in the past year.
This year saw many of the president’s immigration-related campaign threats come to fruition. That came to a head in the late spring and early summer of 2018 as the administration implemented a policy of separating children from their parents at the border as they arrived to claim asylum. But, as Sojourners notes here, this crisis point was just one of many ongoing eruptions at our Southern border.
Amid such horrors in immigration policy, churches throughout the country stepped up in a resurgence of the 1980s-era Sanctuary Movement. In addition to accompanying immigrants to Immigration and Customs Enforcement appointments, training for interaction with ICE agents, and other active support measures, many churches — and synagogues and other houses of worship — are opening their sanctuaries to house people at risk of deportation.
Christmas at the border, winter solstice, Mary's Magnificat, top word of 2018, and more!
The U.S. Congress on Thursday gave final approval to bipartisan legislation supported by President Donald Trump that would bring sweeping changes to prison sentencing and the treatment of inmates during incarceration and following their release.
Why does the God of the Bible, the angels who announce the birth of Christ, then Jesus himself, keep telling us, again and again, not to be afraid or to live in fear? Perhaps it is because our human nature makes us fearful. And what we most easily fear are the people who are “different” than us. Fear of “the other” is a very common human trait.
Celebrating posada at the U.S.-Mexico border is about “nurturing the prophetic imagination, about seeing the world differently.”
The day before Adam Ward was slated to be executed, he sat in a visitation booth at the Allan B. Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas with Rev. DeAnna Golsan, a woman he had never met before. During the months prior, the two — Golsan, a Texan pastor who believed in the merit and morality of the death penalty, and Ward, a man who was sentenced to death — had become unexpected pen pals after being connected by Ward’s mother, an attendee of Golsan’s church. Golsan felt she knew him well, yet, upon meeting Ward, she was forced to confront that the 33-year-old soft-spoken man who cared mostly about his mother was somehow slated for death.
A U.S. judge struck down Trump administration policies aimed at restricting asylum claims by people citing gang or domestic violence in their home countries and ordered the U.S. government to bring back six deported migrants to reconsider their cases.
“Justice” was on people’s hearts, minds, and search histories this year. The word was named Merriam-Webster’s "Word of the Year" for 2018 after being consulted by users 74 percent more than in 2017.
The Jesus story begins with a young woman who also hears many critical voices around her. Mary lives in a culture that tells women they’re more property than persons. Galilee is considered the armpit of her society. Her religion portrays God as mostly a distant and disinterested deity.