Opinion

In 1985, Chicago Mayor Harold Washington passed an ordinance prohibiting city workers from cooperating with immigration police to detain and deport undocumented migrants. With this ordinance, Chicago became a sanctuary city, joining other U.S. cities in resisting policies that criminalize migration. Almost 40 years later, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has used Chicago’s sanctuary status as an excuse to bus and fly thousands of migrants to the city from Texas, where he has instituted strict migration policies.

Since Texas began bussing and flying migrants to Chicago in 2022, the city has welcomed over 30,000 migrants. These migrants have endured terribly cold winters, undignified housing, and a city divided by feelings of frustration, indifference, and solidarity.

Especially for those churches who imagine ourselves to be a mediating middle path in a country where every issue has become sharply partisan, Civil War illustrates that objectivity ends where the suffering of vulnerable people begins.

The gospel writers were not fixated on Mary’s sexual history; it’s the institutional church that objectified her — casting her as a perpetual virgin, elevating her sexual experience (or lack thereof) to be the most important thing about her

The Dune series’ ambivalence and criticism about the role of the messiah lends some light on one of scripture’s more enigmatic ideas: the messianic secret.

In 1935, across the river from where my family lived, the Nazi-run parliament unanimously passed the Reich Citizenship Law. A deepening of the already emerging racial regime, this law categorized who was a German citizen, initially stripping those of Jewish descent of their citizenship. Proof of Aryan descent became essential to maintain or gain citizenship, and this was done primarily through both ancestral birth certificates and ecclesial baptismal records. This use of sacramental records meant that, according to historian Kyle Jantzen, “Churches became the most important site for the implementation of Nazi racial segregation.”

With their citizenship stripped from them and sensing the deadly direction Germany was headed, my great-grandmother acquired forged baptismal certificates and the family fled. Initially escaping to Palestine, they eventually made their way to the U.S. I was raised Christian. But I still struggle with this, now being a part of the faith that inflicted displacement upon my family. I lack a coherent emotional grasp of this story, but I can feel the rough shape of the loss. That loss is unexpectedly present, something I stumble over. But in this stumbling is a small, personal grace that has transformed my faith, bringing me to worship a God who is not simply for the oppressed but engages in the work of liberation.

Jim Wallis is one of the faith leaders who keenly understands the threat of growing nationalism in the church and autocracy in our politics — and the role that Christians must play in stopping it. In his newest book, The False White Gospel: Rejecting Christian Nationalism, Reclaiming True Faith, and Refounding Democracy, he aims to inspire and equip “all who can be persuaded to resist and help dismantle a false gospel that propagates white supremacy and political autocracy.”

Born in Pittsburg on Oct. 9, 1935, Letha was an independent scholar, writer, editor, and writing consultant who specialized in the intersections of religion and social issues. She passed away on Jan. 9, 2024, at a nursing facility in Charlotte, N.C. She was 88.

Her primary metaphor for God was that of a loving friend. She understood Jesus to be the perfect embodiment of the friendship that God offered. For her, this meant that just like a friend changes their likes, activities, and interests due to the growth of a relationship, God also changes because of God’s friendship with us. In any true and deep friendship, both of the friends, as well as the relationship itself, will necessarily shift and adapt. Nothing can stay the same because deep caring calls for responsiveness. “To think God doesn’t change,” Letha said, “doesn’t account for God to have empathy and compassion for us.” She wasn’t striving to put a particular branch of theology into practice, she just trusted her experience.

Some books utterly disrupt you. I was doing research for an essay on St. Augustine and slavery when I first came across humanities scholar Jennifer Glancy’s Slavery in Early Christianity. Reading this book made me realize that everything I thought I knew about the history of Christianity and slavery was wrong.

As racist ideas continue to plague U.S. politics, Mark Doox’s Afro-surrealist and satirical graphic novel, The N-Word of God, couldn’t have arrived at a better time.

The book is a visual novel told through depictions of anti-Black images — Black people eating watermelons, Jim Crow caricatures, mammies, and blackface — all stylized in the form of Eastern Christian iconography. This is a style that Doox has termed “Byzantine Dadaism.” Doox’s novel deconstructively takes these caricatures that have historically harmed Black people and reimagines them as symbols of Black resilience and healing, restoring the inherent dignity that belongs to every human being, especially those who have been racialized and subjugated by U.S. anti-Blackness.