Commentary

Gareth Higgins 2-26-2020

Photo via The Inheritance on Facebook

In The Inheritance, currently on Broadway through mid-March, a century-old English novel (E.M. Forster’s Howards End) gently soundtracks, or perhaps orchestrates, the lives of gay men in their 30s during the period when President Obama was moving out of office, President Trump was moving in, and many of us wondered just where on earth we were.

Photo by Marcin Jozwiak on Unsplash

A report today released by the United Church of Christ identifies the nation’s “Toxic 100” super polluters, naming the factories and facilities responsible for nearly half the toxic air emissions in hundreds of neighborhoods across 28 states. Alongside the report, Breath to the People: Sacred Air and Toxic Pollution, the UCC provides an interactive map, because they believe parents have the right know where these polluters operate. Like toxic water, toxic air is irreversibly harming children across our nation.

Photo by Pro Church Media on Unsplash

Today, the Reclaiming Jesus elders are again calling us to liberation in public witness, but through means other than a rousing church service and candlelit procession to the White House. This time, the journey moves through time (40+ days) rather than space, and the destination is not the presidential residence but something a bit closer to home, if more difficult to reach: our own souls.

Scottie Reeve 2-20-2020

This is a delicate moment for our small Pacific nation. We are in desperate need of voices of compassion and the nonviolent way of Jesus. And yet Christian conferences in Aotearoa New Zealand which draw thousands often feature communicators who were at The White House praying for Trump in October.

Stacey Abrams speaks at the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference. Photo by Christian Smutherman / Sojourners

Voter suppression tactics jeopardize the very legitimacy of the 2020 election. They also represent an assault on human dignity and imago dei, because as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. so aptly put it, “So long as I do not firmly and irrevocably possess the right to vote, I do not possess myself. I cannot make up my mind — it is made up for me. I cannot live as a democratic citizen, observing the laws I have helped to enact — I can only submit to the edict of others.”

Melody Zhang 2-19-2020

Photo by Alvin Engler on Unsplash

On-the-ground solutions to environmental challenges are becoming the most effective and practical strategy. Cities today are leading the way on climate resilience strategies, which are specific to the city’s infrastructural, geographic, spatial and topographic makeup, through initiatives like 100 Resilience Cities and Climate Ready programs, which help cities prepare for the long-term impacts of climate change.

Kaitlin Curtice 2-19-2020

Recently I had the opportunity to read Aundi Kolber’s newest book, Try Softer: A Fresh Approach to Move Us out of Anxiety, Stress, and Survival Mode — and into a Life of Connection and Joy. The book quickly became a regular part of my self-care routine. Aundi is a licensed professional counselor and public speaker, and her work reflects the gentleness that so many of us need in a time in America when we are all a little (or a lot) frazzled by the social, political, and religious climate around us. We need books that help keep us tethered to the work of self-care so that we can do healthier work in the world. Try Softer is a book that can get us there.

September 2019: President Donald Trump visits a section of the U.S.-Mexico border wall in Otay Mesa, California. REUTERS/Tom Brenner/File Photo

The administration is pursuing every tactic at its disposal – many of which have been temporarily stalled by the courts – to impede the path to citizenship and to reduce legal immigration avenues to the U.S.

Joey Chin 2-13-2020

When we started questing the bible, everything falls apart. What can we even trust or believe in? But I think the second fear is that it will drive a wedge between us and this community that is really important to us especially as Asian Americans because we’re a super community oriented culture. So I think that a lot of Asian American Christians are afraid to do that and I think for legitimate reasons. Those fears are not unwarranted.

Russell L. Meek 2-13-2020

Witness Paul Feldsher is questioned by lawyer Donna Rotunno during Harvey Weinstein's sexual assault trial in New York. REUTERS/Jane Rosenberg/File Photo

If it wasn’t already true on the face of it, Denhollander’s comments and the responses to her reveal that the “burden of safety” does not lie with the victim, and a victim certainly doesn’t share blame for putting themselves “in that situation.”

Meredith Wade 2-12-2020

Of course, dirt also tells stories of human triumph and transgression. With one scan from an X-ray fluorescence gun, you can tell whether a soil sample came from Cambridge or Dorchester, based on the amount of lead particulates present. A Ziploc bag full of dirt is also a history of redlining, white flight, and devastating arson, committed by property owners for whom the cost of maintaining the land surpassed the worth of those who called it home. Dirt is an archive of human attitudes toward the nonhuman world — our hubris in thinking ourselves separate from it, though we arose from it, and will inevitably return to it.

Jim Wallis 2-12-2020

President Donald Trump walks to the Oval Office as he returns from a day trip from North Carolina. Feb. 7, 2020. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo

Sojourners was among the first to say the oft-repeated refrain that a budget is a moral document. Of course, that’s still true. Whether for a single household, an organization, or an entire nation, a budget offers a sense of the moral values of the people who create it. It shows who and what do and do not matter — what the priorities are — for the family or church or Congress or the White House.

Randall Balmer 2-11-2020

Tent revival during the Second Great Awakening. "America on Stone" Lithography Collection, 1849 lithograph, Harry T. Peters. Public Domain

Last week, President Donald Trump spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast, an annual bipartisan event that brings together faith leaders and members of Congress. Using language like “I’ve been with you,” and “you better get out and vote on Nov. 3” — insinuating all those of faith gathered align with the president — Trump called once again on support from his most loyal followers: white evangelical Protestants.

Aaron E. Sanchez 2-10-2020

A commitment to justice or equality cannot be purely voyeuristic or touristic.

Amy Fallas 2-07-2020

Shakira and Jennifer Lopez perform during the Super Bowl LIV Halftime Show Feb. 2, 2020. REUTERS/Mike Blake

The prevailing stereotype of unpredictable and hypersexualized brown women’s bodies. 

Jim Wallis 2-06-2020

President Donald Trump delivers a speech as Vice President Mike Pence, his wife Karen Pence, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) look on at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., Feb. 6, 2020. REUTERS/Leah Millis

I did not attend the National Prayer Breakfast this morning, though I have done so in the past. The longtime Washington tradition brings together members of Congress from both political parties along with thousands of faith leaders, and every president since Dwight D. Eisenhower has attended. But this is not a time in our nation for habitual or vague prayers for an audience, given the moral and political crisis we now find ourselves in — or one that starts with the president of the United States holding up a newspaper headline saying “Acquitted,” and quickly invoking an impeachment process corrupted by partisan politics.

Photo by Benjamin Voros on Unsplash

Many psychologists fear awe is receding from our lives and that a vital social resource is disappearing.

Veena Roy 2-04-2020

Image via REUTRS/Rupak De Chowdhuri

As I write, thousands of Muslims families in Hyderabad have been cordoned off and interrogated for identity documents for themselves and their children. Concurrently, Modi’s BJP has forcefully stripped the predominantly Muslim Jammu and Kashmir of their autonomy and has shut off the internet and phones in the area with plans for ‘deradicalization camps’ similar to the Uighur detention centers.

Kaitlin Curtice 2-03-2020

Kansas City Chiefs are introduced during Super Bowl LIV Opening Night at Marlins Park. Photo by Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Like other teams that have mascots that they claim “honor” Indigenous peoples, many Chiefs fans proudly sport their headdresses and tomahawk chops, perpetuating the stereotypes that we are primitive people who either no longer exist or only exist as savage warriors.

Jamar A. Boyd II 1-31-2020

A vendor sells pins as gun rights advocates and militia members attend rally in Richmond, Virginia, U.S. Image via REUTERS/Jim Urquhart. 

We must carefully observe and acknowledge that many black and brown people consistently witness the senseless deaths of individuals at the hands of racists, supremacists, and those inflicting direct harm on Christian and non-Christian houses of worship.