The Evangelical Immigration Table, a group of 11 religious leaders ranging from White House confidante Jim Wallis, the president of the Christian social justice agency Sojourners, to Russell Moore, the leader of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, had planned to use Mr. Cantor’s widely assumed primary victory as a jumping off point to pressure him to proceed on immigration reform legislation.
reform
6-09-2014
Washington often loses sight of the common good. Instead of considering how to best serve the public, many of our elected leaders focus on advancing the agenda of their political party or their own careers. The general welfare is sacrificed for the sake of individual gain. Immigration reform is a textbook example.
6-09-2014
The people we meet change our lives. Through hearing the stories and learning about the lives of others, we are transformed. And, it is for exactly those reasons that I hope you'll watch this short trailer and sign up to be one of the first people to watch The Stranger.
6-09-2014
"Giving the Republicans space takes away their final excuse," said Jim Wallis, president of Christian social justice group Sojourners. "It's all now focused on John Boehner."
6-09-2014
Sojourners President Jim Wallis said that House Speaker John Boehner faces both a moral and a biblical choice regarding putting immigration reform up for a vote in Congress before the August deadline, or it will likely be delayed for another year.
6-09-2014
Add Sojourners, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Committee on Migration to the list of groups which, almost incomprehensibly, asked Obama to “move cautiously.”
6-05-2014
"At its heart, immigration reform is about people, not politics," Jim Wallis, President and Founder of Sojourners, says in a National Journal piece. "Inspired by the teachings of our faith and deeply concerned about the suffering and degradation the current system imposes on millions of people created in God's image, evangelicals and many other people of faith have been steadfast in our support for congressional action to fix and heal this moral crisis."
6-05-2014
A pro-reform coalition that includes the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, National Immigration Forum, Service Employees International Union, Sojourners, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human rights, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Migration recently urged "speaker Boehner and his colleagues to seize the moment," while calling on Obama to restrain himself from taking any executive action on immigration until at least August.
Michelle Alexander 6-03-2014
Photo via sakhorn / Shutterstock
I HEAR A STIRRING, a rumbling. An awakening. Sometimes the sound is so faint, I worry it’s my imagination, my optimism getting the best of me. I pause, listen, and wait. Here it comes again. I want to rush to my window, fling it open, stick my head way out, and look around. Is it happening? For real this time? Is the sleeping giant finally waking up?
God knows we’ve slept too long.
Many of us—myself included—slept through a revolution. Actually, it was a counterrevolution that has blown back much of the progress that so many racial justice advocates risked their lives for. This counterrevolution occurred with barely a whimper of protest, even as a war was declared, one that purported to be aimed at “drugs.”
Really, the war took aim at people—overwhelmingly poor people and people of color—who were taken prisoner en masse and then relegated to a permanent, second-class status, stripped of basic civil and human rights such as the right to vote, the right to serve on juries, and the right to be free from legal discrimination in employment, housing, and access to education and public benefits. Branded “criminals” or “felons,” millions of people discovered that the very rights supposedly won in the civil rights movement no longer applied to them.
5-28-2014
The groups issuing the statement included the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, National Immigration Forum, Service Employees International Union, Sojourners, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Migration.
5-28-2014
The statement came from the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, National Immigration Forum, Service Employees International Union, Sojourners, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Migration.
5-28-2014
A few hours before the White House announcement, several advocacy groups issued a joint statement asking Obama to hold off on executive action and urging Boehner to take action. “We believe the president should move cautiously and give the House leadership all of the space they may need to bring legislation to the floor for a vote,” said the joint statement. The groups that issued it were: National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, National Immigration Forum, Service Employees International Union, Sojourners, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Migration.
5-22-2014
The Evangelical Immigration Table, which includes voices ranging from the Southern Baptist Convention to the National Association of Evangelicals to Sojourners, calls for immigration reform that.
Nick Penniman 5-09-2014
IN ITS SEEMINGLY endless quest to attack the few remaining pillars of our campaign finance laws, the Supreme Court issued a brazen ruling in McCutcheon vs. FEC, striking down the aggregate contribution limits that capped the overall amount individuals could give to candidates and political parties each election cycle. As it was with Citizens United—the 2010 decision that said corporations and unions could spend unlimited amounts—the court’s April ruling was striking not only in its naiveté about the effect of money in politics, but in its naiveté about the nature of the American experiment itself.
Whereas Citizens United focused on the nature of corporate spending in elections, this decision cuts straight to the chase. Should wealthy people have a greater ability to fund political parties and candidates—and benefit from the greater access and influence that awards them? The court sent a clear message about where it stands: Yes, they should. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, even cloaked the decision in pious language, stating, “if the First Amendment protects flag burning, funeral protests, and Nazi parades ... it surely protects political campaign speech despite popular opposition.”
Traditionally the court has asserted that the government has an interest in preventing corruption and the appearance of corruption, the latter in order to sustain public faith in the democratic process. However, the McCutcheon decision defines “corruption” so narrowly that the original statute is essentially useless. The government can no longer prevent the appearance of corruption, and it would have a difficult time proving “quid-pro-quo corruption” occurred in the first place
But despite this disheartening fact, there’s a glimmer of hope. One of the unintended effects of Citizens United was that it created a major “teachable moment” for the public about campaign finance—an issue that had previously gained little attention and was easily misunderstood.
Josephine McKenna, Religion News Service 4-29-2014
Cardinal George Pell in Rome, 2007. Photo courtesy of Gavin Scott [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons.
Pope Francis and his council of eight cardinals are unlikely to complete a radical shakeup of the Holy See’s administration, or Curia, before 2015, the Vatican said Tuesday.
The council, which includes Australian Cardinal George Pell, head of the Vatican’s new economic secretariat, has been meeting in Rome for the past two days and also received input from the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin.
Francis joined the council’s discussions in between events on an intense appointment schedule that included an audience with King Juan Carlos of Spain after the historic double canonizations of Popes John Paul II and John XXIII on Sunday.
David Gibson, Religion News Service 4-25-2014
Pope Francis greets a crowd on his way to a meeting with cardinals at the Vatican on Feb. 21, 2014. RNS photo by David Gibson.
Pope Francis likes to say that he prefers to raise questions rather than issue edicts or change doctrine, and he has certainly generated plenty of debate with his off-the-cuff remarks about gays and his cold-call chats on topics like divorce and Communion, as happened recently with a woman in Argentina.
Now a recent conversation between the pope and a bishop from Brazil about the priest shortage may be moving the issue of married clergy onto the pontiff’s agenda.
It began when Bishop Erwin Krautler, an Austrian-born bishop who heads a sprawling diocese in the Brazilian rain forest, had a private audience with Francis on April 4 in the Vatican.
During the meeting, Krautler and Francis compared notes on how much the priest shortage affects the church, especially in the Southern Hemisphere. Krautler’s diocese, geographically the largest in Brazil, has just 27 priests for 700,000 Catholics, most of whom might attend Mass a couple of times a year.
4-16-2014
"Representative Goodlatte is a politician, we all understand that," said Lisa Sharon Harper, a member of the Christian social justice organization Sojourners. "But fundamentally, this is not about politics, this is about people."
4-16-2014
The two-hour rally featured a variety of religious leaders who said their faith demands reform. Jim Wallis, founder of the evangelical Sojourners, described how Catholic Cardinal Sean O’Malley, archbishop of Boston, held a mass at a border fence in Arizona this month and called immigration reform “another pro-life issue.”
4-16-2014
In 1853, no one could have imagined that the end of slavery in the United States was just 10 years away. Since the 1660s, race-based slavery had upheld the economic base of both the northern and southern colonies and subsequently the United States. The South's agricultural way of life had been made possible and sustained through the backbreaking labor of millions of people who worked in their fields for free.
4-16-2014
The event's Master of Ceremonies was Jim Wallis, a bestselling author and public theologian who frequently comments on ethical issues and public affairs. As one of the leading voices in the American faith community, Mr. Wallis has been calling on Congress, for several years, to remedy the injustices present in the current immigration system. - See more at: http://dc.citybizlist.com/contributed-article/murthy-celebrates-outstand...