Commentary

Stephen Mattson 2-27-2019

The semantics are important to understand because the different terms present two completely contrasting paradigms. One is based on textual interpretations and opinions, while the other is founded upon the words and actions of the living savior of the world. If you’re a Christian, you should always err on the side of Jesus. But if we’re not careful, it’s easy to idolize the bible while simultaneously ignoring the very message of Christ.

Rohadi Nagassar 2-26-2019

Aiden Marples / Unsplash

As a multiracial Christian, growing up in white evangelicalism challenged my sense of belonging. Fitting in was dependent on how well I could match the church culture. Minorities understand that being accepted by the dominant culture means living out a characterization of ourselves rather than our whole selves. We must think and act with sameness to the dominant church in order to belong.

Where are the safe and brave church spaces for Christians of color?

Katey Zeh 2-26-2019

Image via Wikimedia Commons

When I began my theological education, I encountered an even more disturbing reality: the presence of “texts of terror” as Hebrew scholar Phyllis Trible calls them. These heinous sexual crimes and acts of violence committed against women were captured right there, plain as day, in the holy book I treasured.

Courtney Ariel 2-25-2019

Photo by Fancycrave on Unsplash

I’m always very curious about what belonging truly means to a community, and how it is demonstrated. I always wondered, who makes the rules of belonging? Who decides what is and isn’t allowable? Can it go so far as to diminish our humanity or cause us to diminish someone else’s? Many of my early talks with God included questions like these. I still don’t have the answers to all of them, but I’ve spent the past several years trying to find a home inside of the tension between our revolutionary capacity for love as human beings, and our frequent tendencies toward exclusion, destruction and harm.

Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has pushed for a "Universal Child Care" plan. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

Many people, both inside and outside of the church, spoke about the problem of child care according to the same reasons. They viewed it as a complex, local problem with complex, local solutions. A team of parents attempted to create a new center and soon discovered the massive amount of capital, time, energy, and attention it would take. Everyone involved insisted that some solution must be possible if only we could bring together various stakeholders in the community to find a way to provide child care for those that need it. But this obscures the truth about the problem of child care in capitalism: It’s not complex and local, but big and universal.

Abby Perry 2-22-2019

Photo by Igor Rodrigues on Unsplash

As thankful as I am to see Greear speaking clearly and mournfully about sexual abuse in the SBC, I feel concerned by this praise-swirled-with-certainty-of-divine-intervention. It seems to surpass encouragement and land at a premature rendering of Greear as a hero. I fear that too many are equating words of sorrow over sexual abuse with a proportionate, justice-oriented response.

Jennifer Harvey 2-22-2019

So now, here the church sits staring in the face of human rights violations being committed in our national name. Here we sit privy to the betrayal of anything we could possibly claim the gospel to be about — from the actual life story of Jesus and his dark-skinned, refugee family to the theological imperative to love one’s neighbor and stand with the most vulnerable. Here we sit bearing witness to breathtaking levels of racialized, religious violence being emboldened by this administration’s rhetoric and policies.

Jamar A. Boyd II 2-21-2019

Photo by Jordan Whitfield on Unsplash

It is also from this rage and this discontent that Black people in America created and orchestrated their own culture, ensuring that legacy and heritage would exist for their children. They gathered in “hush harbors” to worship their God and Maker, absent of slaveholder religion and influence, tapping into the untampered presence of the Holy Spirit and the deities of the Motherland. They took the slop and remains of the plantation and created a delicacy now known as “soul food”.

DiAnna Paulk / Shutterstock.com

I left the memorial and museum wondering what will be next? Will my 6- and 8-year-old son’s generation decide to construct memorials to the black men and women who were slain by racialized policing and police violence during the era in which they came of age?

Jamie D. Aten 2-19-2019

City of Lights Community Prayer Vigil in Aurora, Ill. Photo Courtesy of Jamie D. Aten. 

Two days after a brutal workplace shooting in the Chicago suburb of Aurora, where five were killed and six were injured, over 1,000 people joined together for a prayer vigil at the Henry Pratt Company plant, filling the street near the building where the shooting occurred. As several local pastors shared prayers with the huge gathering of mourners, the only sounds that broke the silence between prayers were quiet sobs. Beside a gate connected to the plant, people placed flowers, candles, and signs.

Cari Willis 2-14-2019

Photo by Sharon Co Images on Unsplash

And I can’t help but think about my friends on “life” row who live daily in that space. They know that their execution dates can be set at any moment, but they also know that they are alive now and have to live into as much of the fullness of the day as they possibly can. It can be difficult, at times, to sit in the liminal space with my friends, as I never know which they will choose — will they choose life or will they choose death to discuss? And the truth is that they pick both. They need to process their death while they are living. And they have to process their living while they know they face a certain death.

Jim Wallis 2-14-2019

Photo by Jonathan Simcoe on Unsplash

On Ash Wednesday 2018, a group of elders met for a retreat together because of a national political crisis, which was also revealing a crisis of faith. At Pentecost, in overcrowded churches in downtown Washington, D.C., we launched a declaration that we called Reclaiming Jesus: A Confession of Faith in a Time of Crisis. More than 5 million people have directly responded to the Reclaiming Jesus declaration thus far and many more have been reached by it and are addressing the declaration in their churches. A declaration is becoming a movement to re-claim Jesus; the message of Jesus needs reclaiming at a time like this.

Rob Schenck 2-13-2019

Candlelight event organized by Runner's Depot to honor the 17 victims from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Coral Springs, Fla. on Feb 25th, 2018. Shutterstock / Humberto Vidal.

This week, scores of people will once again experience the grief of missing loved ones who were cut down by a deranged young man with multiple deadly weapons in the high school he shared with his victims. The Parkland, Fla. mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which killed 17 people and injured 17, joins the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, which wiped out a classroom of precious children, as two of the most horrific moments in American history. The irony that the Parkland slaughter was on Valentine’s Day only increases the suffering. While many will celebrate having and enjoying their loved ones in their lives, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School survivors will only feel afresh a terrible vacuum.

Anna Sutterer 2-13-2019

Image via Anna Sutterer/Sojourners 

Christian music singer/songwriter Ellie Holcomb released her first children's album, Sing: Creation Songs, in September with an accompanying children's book called Who Sang the First Song?. In January, she and her partner, Drew Holcomb, frontman of Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors, dropped an EP called Electricity.

 

Aaron E. Sanchez 2-12-2019

Photo by Yousef Al Nasser on Unsplash

“For us America is our own country, and it’s all the same: hopeless,” the general told his solider.

General Simón Bolívar had lost faith. The great Liberator of Latin America who fought for independence from Spain, with a vision of a continent united as a single nation would never happen. His men wore the wounds of the revolutions his words inspired and only the frail old man at the end of his life knew how worthless they had been. Political and social change was impossible. He had known the cause was lost for years and kept fighting out of despair, with no dream of any meaningful end.

Kaitlin Curtice 2-12-2019

As adults, if we get the chance to deconstruct our childhood faith, it can often be a traumatic process. Many of us share stories about working with a therapist to unpack trauma from the church, whether it is from the purity movement or the ongoing work of colonization. If you have spent much time on Twitter, you might find some of these conversations floating around, especially in ex-evangelical spaces. Many of us who grew up in the white evangelical church are asking questions about things like missions ideology, white supremacy in the church, toxic patriarchy and sexism, and violence against our LGBTQ friends.

New York City - January 10, 2019: People protesting the ongoing government shutdown in front of a federal building in Lower Manhattan. Editorial credit: Christopher Penler / Shutterstock.com

As is so often the case, it is the poor and marginalized that are the most vulnerable to these arrogant battles of political will. We have now seen that our leaders were willing to hold families and their children hostage, allowing their wellbeing to be threatened by the reckless shut down of portions of the federal government for nothing more than partisan political gain.

Benjamin Perry 2-08-2019

Rigid gender performance is a cultural construct, not a divine decree. Truly, if we are created in the image of God, we are made to transgress narrow definitions of “masculine” and “feminine” behavior. The God of Scripture is neither male nor female, transcending human conceptions of gender altogether. Though frequently referred to with masculine pronouns, at other times God is described in the feminine, as a comforting mother (Isa 66:13) or a hen guarding her brood (Luke 13:34). As Patrick Cheng notes in Radical Love, “God is fundamentally queer,” breaking through any human attempt to restrict God’s gender expression — this is also why Morse’s attempt to lift Jesus up as masculine exemplar rings so hollow; if God and Jesus are one, then Jesus’ “maleness” is purely incidental.

Brandi Miller 2-07-2019

Because the violence of the past was so bad, supposed lesser forms of violence seem less worthy of deconstruction. Toxic masculinity and gun violence are fruits of the same legacy. While it is much easier now to say that slavery and genocide were evils, we have failed to cut them off at their roots, the roots that reek of manipulated biblical texts, hyper masculine domination, and antiquated assumptions about gender. We cannot expect that simply acknowledging the events that resulted from toxic masculinity in the past will deconstruct the assumptions and values that created it to begin with.

Whitney Parnell 2-07-2019

White supremacy is woven and embedded into society as a system so intricately that it can be invisible, mistaken for normalcy because, in fact, that’s what it is. Instead of seeing white supremacy as blatant acts of intentional harm, I challenge us to consider how this country was built to center whiteness. It’s a virus and an energy. It is a virus because it is a sickness at the core of so much harm, and it’s an energy because in its natural state — this country is conditioned to operate in accordance with whiteness: white culture, white thriving, white favoritism, and white comfort.