Commentary

Nope, writer/director Jordan Peele’s third theatrical release, opens with a Bible verse: “I will pelt you with filth, I will treat you with contempt and make you a spectacle” (Nahum 3:6). Cut to a blood-soaked sitcom set where a chimpanzee — arms and mouth also covered in blood — wanders around before settling down and looking at the audience.

One hundred- and eight-degrees Fahrenheit. According to the University of Washington, that June day in 2021 was the hottest day ever recorded in the city of Seattle. And my fourth-floor apartment did not have air conditioning.

I’ll never forget my pastor’s response when I asked about putting a $130 portable ramp in the building where our church meets: “That’s not stewarding tithe well,” he announces without embarrassment. He acts as if he’s making a measured budgetary decision — like he is choosing between two beige paint colors of a similar hue. Except I am the one on eggshells.

Compiling Weekly Wrap is sort of like going on a literary scavenger hunt for meaningful faith angles. And folks, there’s always a faith angle.

I was in elementary school when the first Harry Potter books were published in the United States. At the time, I was a painfully shy and awkward child; I treasured my library card and found solace in the stacks of books I carried home from our local branch. Though I was a prime target for a sensational new children’s book series, my parents — like the rest of our fundamentalist Baptist church — deemed anything about witchcraft inappropriate reading for good Christian children.

While reducing the prevalence of guns in our society is essential, I am wary of religious gun control efforts that focus primarily on federal gun legislation because laws ultimately rely on frameworks of punitive justice, criminalizing anyone who breaks the law. A holistic approach to gun violence should imagine new alternatives for a safer society — alternatives that go beyond the criminal legal system and gun control laws. To imagine these alternatives, we can turn to the lessons of the transformative justice movement, which seeks to address violence without relying on state violence, police, or prisons.

I have been ruminating on the significance of being a pro-choice Black clergywoman in a post-Roe United States. I understand how this may sound subversive despite the fact that two-thirds of American women disapprove of the Supreme Court’s decision last Friday to overturn Roe v. Wade. To some people, it’s incompatible that I could be a minister and support someone’s right to choose to have an abortion.

At its heart, Obi-Wan Kenobi is the story of a monastic rediscovering his vocation, and it provides us an excellent model for how laypeople and monastics alike can work toward justice and mercy.

As a Black woman, I’ve always known that my skin color could get me killed. As I watched Capitol rioters carry the Confederate flag through the Capitol on Jan. 6, I knew the danger was more present than ever. In the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection, the increase in white nationalist terrorism made me realize that I needed to take drastic measures to ensure my safety.