Opinion

The same week that President Donald Trump was meeting with Pope Francis in Rome, another historic event was taking place, as the Global Christian Forum facilitated a groundbreaking encounter with the major global bodies representing most every part of world Christianity.

Eric Barreto 6-06-2017

Power can be transformative, but only if power is suffused with love. As Andy Crouch has written, “Power at its worst is the unmaker of humanity—breeding inhumanity in the hearts of those who wield power, denying and denouncing the humanity of the ones who suffer under power.… Power, the truest servant of love, can also be its most implacable enemy.”

Mallory McDuff 6-05-2017

President Donald Trump (L) listens to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt after announcing his decision that the United States will withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Thus we began the week of healing as the media broadcast Trump’s reality-show drama that cast the climate as some meaningless backdrop for second-rate actors. I passed the time between administering dosages of oxycodone by reading predictions of this staged Rose Garden event. As I read, I wondered: How soon will my daughter heal from this extraction? And what does it mean to extract the second-highest emitter of carbon emissions from an international agreement? And why are these two extractions — on such different scales — linked in my mind forever?

Russell Jeung 6-05-2017

For many Asian immigrants and refugees, coming to the United States wasn’t fully voluntary, but a result of war and poverty. Just as the Hebrews needed to learn to live as exiles, Asian Americans needed to find a way to make a new home in a new land. While their hardships reflect the difficulty of exile, Jimmy’s and Mary’s familial love and corporate responsibility also model for me how we Christians are to follow Jesus in the midst of this empire.

the Web Editors 6-05-2017

Patty Jenkins on set / courtesy of Warner Bros.

Wonder Woman, directed by Patty Jenkins, now holds the title of biggest box office opening for a female-directed film.

Abby Olcese 6-02-2017

Image via Wonder Woman Facebook Group 

At first glance, the meaning behind this tagline for Wonder Woman feels obvious, it is the next step on the DC franchise road to November’s Justice League movie. But of course, there’s more to it than that. Wonder Woman marks a feminist milestone, too, one that feels like artistic justice: it’s the first major superhero movie to feature a female hero, and the first to use a female director, Patty Jenkins.

Jim Wallis 6-01-2017

Image via Geoff Livingston/Flickr

Social and economic inequities are not just personal attitudes — they are the result of structural problems prevalent in many sectors of society and government. In the face of this reality, the federal government can be a force for good, attempting to correct its own past complicity and working to prevent future discriminatory behavior by businesses, schools, contractors, local police departments, and more. But this administration’s disregard for civil rights in the federal agencies it administers leads to an inescapable conclusion.

Image via Nicole S Glass / Shutterstock.com

The pope talks about environmental protections from a spiritual perspective — an understanding of creation as a holy and precious gift from God, to be revered by all. We should make it a priority to keep our air clean, our water pristine, and our land whole. Whether we understand environmental stewardship as a God-given moral responsibility or from an economic and military strategic viewpoint, the fact remains: Environmental instability is inextricably linked to economic instability and increased discord throughout the world.

Abby Olcese 5-31-2017

Image via War Machine Facebook Page

The biggest issue War Machine faces is that satire seems to be the wrong track for the movie to take. War and soldiers are difficult subjects to make funny. The best that writer-director Michôd can manage is to provide the stars — like Pitt and his military cohort — with a couple of strange quirks to color their performances. Sometimes these characterizations feel lazy, other times like the actors are trying too hard. The humor, when it’s there, feels forced.

Kaitlin Curtice 5-30-2017

San Fernando Cathedral with Native American Light Show in San Antonio, Texas. Kelly vanDellen / Shutterstock.com

A young indigenous man from the Quinault Indian Nation was killed on Saturday night by a man witnesses describe as a white, in his 30s, who shouted racial slurs before backing over two men with his pickup truck, reports the Seattle TimesBut you probably haven’t heard this news, not with all the other news floating through cyberspace.

Billy Honor 5-30-2017

Most often Pentecost comes to us as a momentous Christian occasion of spiritual power, ethnic unity, gender equality, multi-generational comradery, and immigrant hospitality. But when the moment has passed, it gives way to the more ignoble features of life and community, like spiritual apathy, sexism, racial prejudice, ageism, xenophobia, etc.

Kermit Hovey 5-26-2017

Image via Rob Crandall / Shutterstock

On Capitol Hill, we find Democrats acknowledge climate change, affirm the need for action, and sometimes even express frustration and discouragement that there has not been more action. It is as if they need more hope. On the other hand, we find Republicans continue to minimize climate change as a problem or maximize the unworkable unaffordability of a solution. Yet sometimes, off camera and behind the scenes, we encounter Republicans who fear calling for climate action due to the risk of being “primary-ed” or knocked out of an election in a primary. It is as if they need more courage.

 

Friends and family members gather around a victim's casket at a church supporting the Rise Up movement. Image via Eric Stoner 

The heightening militarism following Trump’s invitation to Duterte is neither unrelated nor isolated from U.S imperialism in the Philippines — a history that is often manipulated through religious language.

David Beltrán 5-26-2017

Screenshot from "Despacito"/YouTube

Why did it take clichéd pop verses in English — lyrics that could be copy-and-pasted to any Bieber song and wouldn’t feel out of place — and some mediocre Spanish singing for “Despacito" to get its due?

Image via RNS/The Potter's House of Dallas

The June 28-July 1 event he calls “a bit of a vacation in a spiritual atmosphere” drew 90,000 when it was last held in 2015 — a predominantly black crowd that also included whites, Hispanics, and people from 40 other countries.

Jakes, an author, media producer, and pastor of The Potter’s House talked to Religion News Service about bridging racial and political divides, coping with terrorist threats, and his approaching 60th birthday.

Juliet Vedral 5-25-2017

No longer will I be the single woman in my 30s, always a bridesmaid but never a bride. It doesn’t mean that I will not struggle to trust God with my life. But it will be a reminder to me — and to all our witnesses — that God does answer prayer, and all the suffering and sorrow that came before can been remade into something more glorious than it was before.

Kaitlin Curtice 5-25-2017

Social media, and Twitter especially, has become a place where people of all beliefs can come together for conversations about all manner of things, from men’s rompers to views on abortion. And from our worship leaders and in our pulpits, we hear the word of God for the people of God again, this time in person. So we’re constantly processing, constantly asking what God is saying to us, constantly asking who we should be as an institution, as the body of Christ.

Samuel Son 5-25-2017

Image via Mikhail Markovskiy / Shutterstock

But the strong affirmation of Christ’s absence kept the early church from centralizing around Jerusalem. Without the body of Jesus to create a memorial, no land or language could monopolize claim to sacredness. Ascension, in one sense, is an abdication of worldly authority. It is the empowerment of everyone, no matter their land and language.

College student Richard Collins III seen at the ROTC (Reserve Officers' Training Corps) Commissioning ceremony at Bowie State University in Bowie, Maryland, U.S., photo received May 23, 2017. Bowie State University/Handout via REUTERS

Since hearing the news, I have anguished over one question: Why did white evangelical silence over this unprovoked attack by this white man on the black man bother me so much? Certainly racial attacks against African Americans by white Americans is not a new phenomenon. My answer came in reading the response of the judge where the attacker was held without bond.

Ed Spivey Jr. 5-23-2017

Donald Trump, image via Evan El-Amin / Shutterstock.com; Pope Francis image via Nick McCready / Shutterstock.com

Today is the historic meeting between President Donald Trump and Pope Francis, part of the three-nation visit the White House staff has been planning for weeks, following the well-established and delicate protocols that ensure a smooth visit with foreign leaders, before it all goes to crap with an early-morning tweet. (Several White House staffers have reportedly developed numbness in their hands from keeping their fingers crossed for the first hundred days of the Trump administration. And in packing for this trip, those same staffers had to find space for the president’s extra shoes, since another one seems to drop almost every day.)