Civil Rights
You would think attempting to summarize my feelings on having been asked to deliver the Benediction at the Inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama-would be simple. In fact, it's quite a challenge; given the flood of emotions I have experienced ...
Odetta has gone home.
Artists that touch our hearts help us to see, and they speak for us our own mute truth. A spiritual breath of courage and grace breathes through them and upon us. Our base selves, slouching away from our humanity, stand up straight and recognize that our human being is found in righteous relationships, and we are translated into our more noble selves.
It was a warm spring afternoon when Martin Luther King addressed tens of thousands gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial, the largest gathering to date in the growing struggle for civil rights.
King rallied the crowd with his stirring refrain: "Give us the ballot!" He called for the government, white liberals, white Southerners, and finally the African-American [...]
Yesterday morning, I started what would become an historic day with my favorite historian. As a young man, Vincent Harding was part of the inner circle of the southern freedom movement with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and later became one of the civil rights movement's best chroniclers and interpreters. Vincent has also been a mentor and trusted friend to me and to Sojourners for many years.
Vincent Harding was there at the Democratic Convention in 1964 when the party refused to seat [...]
Somebody came up to me in Denver and said, "At the Democratic Convention of 2008, faith is cool!" That is indeed a big change from recent years. As I have been saying at the many "faith forums" in Denver, faith must have a different and better role than it has had in politics these last few decades.
And I have been encouraged by the more "prophetic" role that faith has played here, deeper than the partisan use of faith in recent memory. At one of those faith panels, Rev. Otis Moss [...]
I'm voting in this election, not with naivete but with sincere enthusiasm. Not with any messianic hopes, but with a deep sense of moral responsibility as a shareholder or steward of the richest, most dominant, and most well-armed nation in the world. I had another long talk with a friend a couple weeks back who, on religious grounds, is passionately against voting. He had read my earlier posts on the [...]
I have been watching the Democratic National Convention this week, and I think when Barack Obama gives his acceptance speech tonight it is going to be an important historic moment. This is not to tell you who to vote for. That's up to you. But I can't help but anticipate watching a person of color stand in the place he will tonight. I don't advocate voting for him (or not) because he is a black man, but it sure is encouraging to see history unfold. The amount of anguish that comes with [...]