Commentary
This challenge to dismantle white supremacy and build a beloved community is one that white Christians need to undertake for the sake of their own obedience to God. Those of us who are white need to realize that this challenge and calling isn't for other people. It isn't for people of color who white people need to help.
The Bay Area will be without electricity for at least a day and a half in order to prevent power lines from sparking wildfires.
Photo by Loïc Fürhoff on Unsplash
Our greatest prophets took the time to ask that question often, and we can follow in their footsteps.
Photo by Andrew Itaga on Unsplash
As people of faith, our blood should boil when we hear people try to say our God is for marriage segregation.
Most everyone I grew up with near Goodman Street in northeast Rochester attended Corpus Christi. A post-Vatican II parish complete with folk group and food pantry to help a neighborhood of mostly single mothers, the church was a rare source of sustenance and light. Still, by the time we hit our twenties, most of us had escaped the urban neighborhood and along with it, left the church. I returned a few years ago — first for Christmas Mass, then to interview a parishioner for a story, and then for no good reason at all. This unmoored me. Even as I sang the Psalm, I surveyed the rows of empty pews.
Photo by Kyle Ellefson on Unsplash
How do we maintain hope when our earth is brutalized daily by the climate disasters brought on by human greed, denial, and consumption?
Pope Francis attends the unveiling of a sculpture depicting a group of migrants of various cultures and from different historic times, following a mass for World Day of Migrants and Refugees, at St. Peter's Square at the Vatican September 29, 2019. REUTERS/Vincenzo Pinto/Pool
It’s a tragic fact that 75 percent of white Americans have no people of color in their social circles outside of work. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s observation that 11 o’clock on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week is still largely true. And if you’re only in a world that looks like you, then you aren’t going to understand Jesus’ answer to the question “And who is my neighbor?”
Revelations are supposed to happen on roads. Prophecies on the road from Delphi. Epiphany on the way to Judah. Miracles on the road to Damascus. You don’t expect them to happen on empty highways in East Texas.
Image via REUTERS/Leah Millis
I found some fundamental questions Jesus asked or were prompted in others by the things he said and did — eight Jesus questions — that resonate as so completely relevant to the time we are in. A crisis is both a danger and an opportunity, a great danger to marginalized people who have been put in such risk, but also an opportunity for all of us to re-discover Jesus — to reclaim Jesus, to go back to him. That’s why I wrote this book Christ in Crisis: Why We Need to Reclaim Jesus, to lift up these core Jesus questions, which are both so timely and yet so timeless. I knew the book would likely be timely when it came out this fall; but couldn’t have imagined how dramatic that timing would be.
Image via Rev. Jeff Bunke / RNS
It’s not much to make 100 stoles when up to 100 people die each day in this country from gun violence.
Credit: Shutterstock
Lost in the debate was concern about the employees preparing the sandwich, their hours, and compensation.
Photo by Jaromír Kavan on Unsplash
Saint Francis praying to sister moon and brother sun has changed me. I must confess I am going through a conversion, yet another one. But this time much bigger than I could imagine. I have begun listening to the birds. I have started paying attention to the rivers. I have stopped to talk to trees. As a city boy who grew up in the dirty streets of Sao Paulo, I am becoming closer to the pulsing heart of forests, animals, rocks and skies, and it has expanded my allegiance to God.
A great migration north. By Jacob Lawrence.
Much like Isaac from the book of Genesis, I am the son of a family seemingly destined to transience.
Donald Trump speaks during the "Global Call to Protect Religious Freedom" event at U.N. headquarters in New York City, Sept. 23, 2019. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Today, Congress took another step toward addressing its constitutional duty to provide oversight of the executive branch. The House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations and the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship are holding a joint hearing on oversight of the “Muslim” travel ban.
To Kill a Mockingbird and Just Mercy have notable parallels and important divergences: Like Atticus, Stevenson is defending a wrongfully accused black man from a racist community. But this time, there’s no white savior, and Stevenson isn’t going to lose the case.
And yet, it’s undeniable that the election of Donald Trump and the presidency that has followed — and the Christian response to all of it — have revealed how disconnected many American Christians have become from Jesus. In particular, the uncritical support Trump enjoys from many white evangelicals in the religious right, and the Faustian bargain they have made for power, are turning many Americans (and others) away from Christianity altogether.
Feb. 15, 2019: Protestors with banners at a Youth strike for climate march in central London. Credit: Shutterstock.
On Friday, Sept. 20, driven by our faith and by our profound concern about climate change, we will be joining young people from around the world in a climate strike. We will join with youth who, frightened by the impact that a hotter planet will have on their lives and angry that adults have done so little in response, are demanding that world leaders take transformative action to address the emergency that we face. Millions of us will take to the streets to demand a right to a future for generations to come.
Trailer for "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood." YouTube.
The new film A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood thankfully avoids giving us a Fred Rogers biopic, one that hits rote beats that show us how Rogers grew into the saintly human we welcomed into our homes. Instead, it provides a kind of parable of the love and forgiveness and empathy that Rogers preached, one in which Rogers himself happens to feature significantly.
Photo by melissa mjoen on Unsplash
A few days ago, my son started a science journal to write down questions and answers about why certain things happen in the natural world. His first question was: Why do leaves change color in autumn?
"The Fearless Girl" statue facing Charging Bull in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Credit: Shutterstock
As African-American faith leaders committed to the social justice tradition of the Black Church, we would like to raise our voices to point out that it is not lost on us that Larry Summers and the establishment economists have done immense damage to the communities we serve, as well as to the broader American public, via their influence on economic policymaking. We recognize in the new school of economic thought, called Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), a credible, highly impressive, and genuinely public-spirited alternative to the disastrous economic stewardship offered by the old guard. MMT also offers a powerful theoretical defense of the Federal Job Guarantee, a proposal that was pioneered by America’s first black economist, Sadie Alexander, and a centerpiece of the activism of civil rights icon, Coretta Scott King.