Austen Hartke 5-04-2016

Many Christians today have transgender friends and family members that they’d like to support, but they feel conflicted and confused about the details. Jesus calls us to welcome the stranger, and that means opening our hearts and our doors to people we don’t understand. At the same time, it’s all right to have questions! The act of seeking understanding often leads to increased compassion and empathy for others.

The lives of clergy are known to be difficult, but in Nigeria they are often dangerous, too.

Last week, gunmen shot at a car carrying Roman Catholic Cardinal John Onaiyekan in the country’s southern Edo state. The cardinal was returning home after attending the 10th anniversary celebrations for the Uromi Diocese. He was unharmed.

the Web Editors 5-04-2016
CBS Chicago

Video of the incident, showing officers pepper spraying and dragging her as they laughed, was released April 28.

the Web Editors 5-04-2016

President Obama will designate Stonewall Inn and some of the surrounding Greenwich Village neighborhood as a national monument, the first to memorialize the struggle for gay liberation, reports The New York Times.

In his second inaugural address, Obama lifted up the gay rights activism at Stonewall along with the women’s suffrage convention at Seneca Falls and the civil rights march in Selma.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum will give its highest honor to a lion of the American civil rights movement, U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga.

Lewis will be presented with the Elie Wiesel Award at the museum on May 4. Chairman Tom A. Bernstein lauded Lewis in a statement as a leader of “extraordinary moral and physical courage” and “an inspiration to people of conscience the world over.”

Kimberly Winston 5-03-2016

Not all Americans pray. So the American Humanist Association, among the largest national advocacy groups of nonbelievers and other secularists, wants the first Thursday in May to be recognized by Congress as a National Day of ReasonBut that day is already designated as the National Day of Prayer, with a 65-year history of support from Congress, state and local governments and every sitting president since its inception in 1952.

Charles Camosy 5-03-2016

President George W. Bush let innumerable attacks on his decisions, intelligence, and character roll off his back while he was in office. But facing the families of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan took a heavy emotional toll on his presidency.

Bush wrote more than 4,000 letters to these families. He also met with many of them, behind closed doors and away from cameras and reporters. The dramatic scenes, according to first lady Laura Bush, were “incredibly emotional.”

Layton E. Williams 5-03-2016

Clergy have long been expected to be paragons of piety and purity. As public religious figures, we’re assumed to represent the moral ideal — an example for others to follow — and as a result, we become archetypes rather than human beings. We are measured up against an image of what a perfect Christian pastor should look like.

Mark Charles 5-03-2016

Unfortunately, the dialogue that is taking place this election cycle is not about broad-based equality or ending racism. The conversation we are having today is about the type of racism we want to settle for. Do we want Hillary Clinton to work to keep racism as our nation’s implicit bias, or allow Donald Trump to champion racism as our explicit bias? After all, isn't building a wall, banning Muslims, and personally funding a presidential campaign with a fortune made by buying and selling land that has been ethnically cleansed merely the fruit of a country that has learned all too well how to deal with the “merciless Indian savages” who sometimes get "off the reservation?"

the Web Editors 5-03-2016

The presidential campaign has raised visibility on the heavy loads of debt carried by college students, but researchers just discovered something that people haven’t been talking about: the racial gap in college debt.

new study in Children and Youth Services Review concludes that even when controlling for differences in socioeconomic status, black and Hispanic students face the prospect of more debt than white students do.