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Elijah Moss, Rev. Otis Moss Jr., and Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III are pictured filming for Otis' Dream. Image courtesy Otis Moss III.
In an effort to call faith-based communities to action during the 2020 election season, his grandson Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III, pastor of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, shares his family’s story in the 14-minute film, Otis’ Dream.
Joe Biden speaks during a campaign event in Sumter, South Carolina, U.S., February 28, 2020. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
The former vice president – and the Democratic primary’s only Roman Catholic candidate – attended a morning Mass to have the ash rubbed onto his forehead to be reminded, as the old dictum goes, that from dust he came, and to dust he shall return.
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Vote today. Choose the candidates you think represent the best chance to bring God’s values of love, inclusion, justice, healing, and compassion into our world.
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In a time like this, prayer is not perfunctory, an add on, or a brief closing to a meeting. Rather it is an opening to what indeed has now become “spiritual warfare” as the New Testament describes.
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It just keeps happening. Voter suppression that is. Too many political leaders — who are disproportionately white — will use every option available to try and prevent some — disproportionately people of color — from voting. It just keeps happening, and many Americans either don’t know, don’t care, or wholeheartedly favor denying their fellow citizens of color the right to vote. Because it keeps happening, we must ask if support for this practice is as prevalent for white Christians as it is for white non-Christians.
1. Scientist Calmly Explain That Civilization Is at Stake if We Don’t Act Now
“The world has already warmed by about 1 degree C and without a global coordinated effort, the world will reach 1.5 degrees in as little as 12 years. ‘Several hundred million’ lives are at stake, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”
2. To Protect the Environment, Buddhist Monks Are Ordaining Trees
To harm an ordained monk is a religious taboo and legal offense. An ordination extends this sacred status to the tree. Communities that ordain trees often patrol the forest, taking photos of illegal activity and reporting wrongdoers.
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Of course the system is rigged — systems are always rigged to protect the wealth, power, and self-interest of those who created them, those who benefit from them. That’s not hyperbole; that’s reality, that’s human nature, and that’s what the Bible calls sin. And that’s why systems need to be held accountable — to the common good rather than just the system makers and controllers. And that’s why Jesus calls us to protect, in particular, "the least of these" who are most vulnerable to the systems' exploitation. This is why defending systems that just maintain the powerful’s own self-interest while neglecting the interests of others, especially the most vulnerable, is not just bad politics — it’s bad theology.
"This does not establish justice, its establishes injustice," Rev. Barber said, riffing on the Preamble of the Constitution. "This does not provide for the common defense, because it takes away defense from the poorest among us … This does not promote the general welfare, it promotes harm for the least of these."
While much of the country is still reeling from the presidential election, residents of Hyattsville, Md., are preparing to vote — some for the first time ever (in the United States). Thanks to an amendment the Hyattsville City Council passed this December, non-U.S. citizens now have the right to vote in municipal elections.
Image via RNS/Election Day Communion 2016
The idea for an Election Day church service came to the pastor as he was pouring juice into little plastic cups.
Mark Schloneger was preparing for Communion that day in 2008, in the kitchen of Waynesboro Mennonite Church in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. The phone rang. It was a robocall from Sarah Palin, the GOP’s vice presidential nominee that year. She was imploring Christians to go to the polls, vote for her party, and take back the country.
Image via Orhan Cam/Shutterstock.com
The City Council in the nation’s capital has overwhelmingly voted for a bill that would allow terminally ill people a medically assisted death.
That makes Washington, D.C., the sixth jurisdiction nationwide to approve what opponents often call “physician-assisted suicide.” The bill would legalize it for those who have six months or less to live, who do not suffer from depression, and who request the option several times.
During his earthly ministry, Jesus served fully as God’s agent and modeled God’s value system in everything he did. Demonstrating God’s love, Jesus affirmed the divine image in flawed humans of every background: a Samaritan woman of ill repute, a wealthy man who exploited the poor, and a Roman centurion or military leader whose son needed healing. In the same way, Jesus’ followers are fully pardoned from all sin by his sacrifice on the cross to become God’s agent. As “new creations” and “agents of reconciliation,” followers of Jesus are spiritually equipped to love those outside their comfort zone, see all others as God sees them, and build bridges across many divides.
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Now, more than ever, we need political candidates and elected officials on both sides of the aisle who value the rich and diverse tapestry of this nation and seek to build bridges instead of walls. And while we deserve candidates who exhibit civility and respect in their campaigns and governance, this has never been a guaranteed right. We must be committed and courageous enough to speak out for mutual respect and decency. We must challenge all leaders and hold them accountable to the values presented throughout the gospel.
We must remove the veil that separates the least of these and count it not robbery to give them their legal, spiritual, and constitutional right to move beyond acts of mercy, but to build power for social change. As we begin to build prudent bridges, we break the sacred-secular divide and crippling covenants the silence us. We must renounce the manifesto placed upon our communities, schools, neighborhoods that allows the rich to reap where they have not sown. We must embrace our right to vote not only as a civil right, but a Godly right. We can no longer impose predatory measures upon ourselves; we have to remove the cloak of suppression.
Donald Trump is clearly appealing to our worst instincts, as many have said, but let’s be more clear: Donald Trump is appealing to the worst instincts of white people, and American history has shown how ugly and violent those white instincts can be. He is right when he claims to be bringing out people that have never voted before — but he leaves out that those new voters are angry white people.
AS ONE OF the few white males who has not declared his candidacy for president, I’m actually enjoying the relative calm before the upcoming election season. Our television shows are still punctuated by soothingly predictable commercials about luxury cars and erectile dysfunction. In a few months they’ll be railing against job-killing gay marriage and the evils of climate science, also job-killing, followed by the reassuring voice of a man who says “I apologize for this message.” (Kidding. But wouldn’t that be great?!)
At this point, with little at stake, the legions of Republican candidates are of interest only for their entertainment value, their speeches lacking in substance but their repetitive talking points ripe with possibility for drinking games. (Caution: When listening to Ted Cruz, don’t choose the words “constitution” or “unadulterated judicial activism” if you’re the designated driver.)
We’re at that sweet spot in time when Iowa is just a state known for its agricultural products (corn, I think), and when Hillary Clinton has not yet been compared to Hitler. If we think about politics at all, it’s to come up with reasons not to support Bernie Sanders. Because, if you set aside the oddity of a Vermont senator who still sounds like the Flatbush of his youth, there’s only one reason: his age. He’s 73, six years older than Hillary Clinton and decades older than Donald Trump, who is, like, 12, right?
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BY CHANGING THE definition of marriage in its constitution from “between a man and a woman” to “between two people, traditionally a man and a woman,” the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has joined a number of other religious groups in the U.S. in allowing same-sex marriage.
In so doing, the 1.75 million-member denomination completed a dramatic turnaround on marriage equality. In 2012—at a time when same-sex marriage was legal in only a handful of states—the 220th PC(USA) General Assembly was so deeply divided on the issue that it merely called for two years of “serious study and discernment” of Christian marriage.
The 2014 General Assembly—with nearly two dozen states by then having legalized same-sex marriage—voted 429-175 to recommend the constitutional change. By March of this year, the requisite majority of the PC(USA)’s 172 presbyteries (regional governing bodies) had ratified the proposal.
Reaction to the change was immediate, and predictable.
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AS WE SWING into the 2016 presidential campaign, we Americans can be certain of at least one thing: We will be treated to another round of very public arguments about the role of religion in our republic. If this were a boxing match, and if past patterns persist, the title of the bout would be Christian Nation vs. Secular Country. The sides, more eager to mobilize their own than have a conversation with the other, will happily seek to bludgeon one another.
Thankfully, a number of writers have set out to complicate this picture in a way that adds both color and hope. Peter Manseau’s One Nation, Under Gods and Denise Spellberg’s Thomas Jefferson’s Quran are beautifully written accounts of our interfaith country. By interfaith, I mean both that there were people of different faith persuasions present from our earliest days, and that they constantly bumped into one another as they established their communities and sought to build up this country.
Illustration by Ken Davis
WITH THE CRUCIAL midterm elections less than a fortnight past, many Americans are wondering what “fortnight” means, because it sounds really cool on Downton Abbey. Well, it means two weeks, and that’s hardly enough time to develop the regret appropriate to the choices you made at the polls.
But why wait for that inevitable sinking feeling about your latest destructive act against democracy? Let’s get a jump start on your anxiety by reading through a recent poll asking Americans how Jesus would weigh in on issues of the day.
Let the disappointment begin.
As a devout Christian—you can put down your American flag, we know who you are—you regularly ask yourself, “What would Jesus do?” And who better to advise you than Jesus himself, or the best representation of God’s son that modern technology can provide: the telephone survey.
You know, that thing that happens when you’ve just sat down to eat dinner after already getting up twice, once for the cracked pepper you forgot and again to replace the bent fork that you always seem to end up with. Then you finally start to say grace AND THE DARN PHONE RINGS!! (Jesus calls us to follow him. The survey guy calls us at dinner time.)
IN THIS YEAR'S midterm elections, hundreds of thousands of Americans will have a much more difficult time casting their ballots than they did two years ago. And it won’t be because of rain, or early winter snows, or other acts of God.
It will be because powerful people don’t want them to vote.
Why? They stand to gain politically if the “wrong” people can be kept away from the polls. It’s the opposite of a “get out the vote” campaign—“keep out the vote” describes it better.
The tradition of keeping particular sectors of the population from taking part in the franchise goes back to the founding fathers. John Adams, for instance, believed that only rich, successful, smart people should vote—and only people of a certain race and gender, of course.
“Such is the frailty of the human heart,” Adams wrote in May 1776, “that very few men who have no property have any judgment of their own.” At the time, politicians in Massachusetts wanted to allow men who didn’t own property to vote. Adams thought that was a bad idea. For him, no property meant no vote.