Opinion
The writer, James Baldwin, stated in 1962, “It is, alas, the truth that to be an American writer today means mounting an unending attack on all that Americans believe themselves to hold sacred.” It is the truth that to be a person of faith in America today, is to recognize that America desires Jesus slogans over morally grounded Jesus-inspired action.
This morning President Trump posted the following unconscionable tweet regarding our upcoming election that dishonors Congressman Lewis’ legacy and poses a direct threat to our democracy:
With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???
As a shooting survivor who works to educate people about gun violence and advocate for gun reform in the United States, I have spent years trying to convince people that it is worth making personal sacrifices for the sake of the collective good. That’s how I knew that if surviving this pandemic was riding on the event that people would willingly choose to give up a small amount of personal freedom to protect someone else, we were already in a losing battle.
Every nonfiction book is personal, often arising from some faint but persistent insight, a kernel of awareness that blossoms into a story that demands to be told. White Too Long began with a growing consciousness of the abiding presence of white supremacy within the faith we white Christians have inherited and live within.
What remains for all who’ve hit rock bottom is the long road to healing.
I spent many hours just looking at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The words that kept coming to me were “courage” and “gratitude,” and the question that surfaced was: What bridge we will now have to cross?
Pollster Robert P. Jones speaks with Rev. Jim Wallis about how white American Christianity and white supremacy collaborate throughout our nation's history.
The Supreme Court recently issued a ruling that stripped the protections of anti-discrimination laws from thousands of teachers at religiously affiliated schools.
While researching C.T. Vivian’s life, I had the honor of sitting with Vivian for hours, hearing about his life and work. “This was truly a religious experience,” he said. “People need to know that.”
I spent a year collecting ethnographic data in a predominantly white, conservative, Christian K-12 school. It troubled me that my tax dollars were being used to support the kinds of teaching and discriminatory admissions practices I witnessed.
Dr. Eddie Glaude speaks with Rev. Jim Wallis about the need for a profound change in America that he calls the "The Third Founding."
Families are anxious to hear whether, when, and how schools will reopen. They can’t. And it’s because of a failure of leadership.
I worry my children will be stunted by the solitary nature of our lives. Like how a tree during a hard season slows its growth, a ring for a year of strain nothing more than a thin encasement, the depth of skin. We’ve spent months in isolation, only briefly in the midst of others, but never close enough to touch.
The tangled web of some U.S. and international evangelical and Pentecostal leaders blessing Israel’s expansionist ambitions toward the West Bank and more has a long and complicated history. President Trump has wrapped his political arms around those religious allies today in a craven attempt to preserve his evangelical base. But other Christians – including many prominent evangelicals – have consistently refused to condone Israeli occupation of Palestinian land as a supposedly “biblically sanctioned” real estate plan.
Living an embodied faith asserts meaning upon our bodies both as individuals, and in relationship to one another. This means that the places our non-white bodies inhabit tell a story in itself, just as God enfleshed “entered our lives, calling us from the tomb in which society has sought to confine us.” The shared space of believers living out the Christian faith in diverse, multi-ethnic communities is a witness to our world of the power of Jesus Christ.
Menlo Church pastor John Ortberg Jr. knew his son was attracted to children and failed to restrict his access.
The government of Israel could soon begin formally annexing a significant portion of the West Bank. As the leader of an ecumenical and nonpartisan organization focused on advocating for a just and lasting end to the conflict in Israel-Palestine, I am deeply worried annexation will entrench inequalities and abuses of Palestinian human rights.
Although more politically conservative and evangelical voices are joining in the #BLM chants of “No Justice, No Peace,” there are undoubtedly shaky voices and (perhaps hostile) minds who hold that while black lives do matter “in theory,” radical institutional change is far too dangerous and subversive, if not completely un-American.
Let’s be very clear: Tearing down symbols is not enough. Changing statues can never substitute changing policies and practices based on skin color and that still undergird this country’s systematic racism. But symbols do send clear messages about personal and national memory and about future possibilities.
"If you have people straining to live under the weight of a system that seeks to constantly dehumanize, then it doesn't matter how much training the police will get."