Weekly Wrap 12.13.19: The 10 Best Stories You Missed This Week | Sojourners

Weekly Wrap 12.13.19: The 10 Best Stories You Missed This Week

1. Embracing Mexican Traditions in a Church Founded for Italian Immigrants

Call it an American melting pot – or pozole, a traditional Mexican soup, or cioppino, an Italian-American fisherman’s stew – Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in the Belmont neighborhood of the Bronx welcomes worshippers from more than a dozen nations.

2. The Christian Withdrawal Experiment

Feeling out of step with the mores of contemporary life, members of a conservative-Catholic group have built a thriving community in rural Kansas. Could their flight from mainstream society be a harbinger for the nation?

3. Kindness Criminalized at the Border

The evening before an Arizona jury decided the fate of Scott Warren, who was charged with a felony for harboring and assisting "illegal aliens," people of faith from around the country gathered in Tucson to show their support. After two hours of deliberation, the jury found Warren not guilty.

4. Greta Thunberg Is TIME’s 2019 Person of the Year

The climate activist has succeeded in turning vague anxieties about the planet into a worldwide movement calling for global change.

5. My Country Stole the Dreams of Carlos Hernandez Vasquez

Too often, we discuss immigration as if migrants were objects, not subjects in their own journey. Individual stories disappear into the rhetoric of “tens of thousands,” retreating into statistics’ deadening numb.

6. Fox News Is Now a Threat to National Security

The network’s furthering of lies from foreign adversaries and flagrant disregard for the truth have gotten downright dangerous.

7. Misusing Romans 13 to Embrace Theocracy

The gospel is ultimately a message of following Jesus, not passively cowing to a government.

8. Jewish Groups React to Trump's Plan to Designate Judaism as a Nationality

'Trump has never cared about stopping antisemitism — this executive order is about silencing Palestinians and the people who speak up with them'

9. Migrants Form Community on the Steps of a Moroccan Church

The European Union has pressured Morocco to curb migration in recent years. Since 2014, they have committed to disbursing €232 million for migration-related support. But as funding has increased, so has the violence of law enforcement.

10. This North Carolina Church Is Doing Something Radical: Paying Off People’s Debts

Jubilee Baptist is a quasi-socialist, anti-racist, LGBTQ-affirming church conducting a bold experiment: focusing on debt, work, and freedom from oppression instead of fear and moralism.

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