Weekly Wrap 5.19.17: The 10 Best Stories You Missed This Week | Sojourners

Weekly Wrap 5.19.17: The 10 Best Stories You Missed This Week

1. You Must Understand Why You Believe What You Believe — and How You Got There

In a world in which your opinions on a topic can change with a well-worded “well, actually” tweet, it’s more important than ever that we examine the roots of our beliefs. Read how, from The Establishment.

2. The Spiritual Disciplines of Fasting, Prayer, and Action

President Donald Trump’s full budget proposal is set to drop next week, and it’s expected to include deep budget cuts to SNAP (formerly known as food stamps), Medicaid, child nutrition, and more. Now is a time for prayer, discernment, and action.

3. The House Voted to Give Some Powers of Librarian of Congress to Donald Trump

According to specialists, the bill does not resolve some of the very real flaws in contemporary U.S. copyright law. But it does give more power to Donald Trump. And it does take power away from a woman who has spent her life trying to find the ways to get information and literature into the hands of those who need it the most.”

4. EPA Cancels Ban on Pesticides. 1 Month Later, Farmers Are Getting Sick

The move was one of the first major decisions by President Donald Trump’s head of the EPA, Scott Pruitt.

5. The Empathy of David Brown

Long read from Texas Monthly profiling Dallas Police Chief David Brown, the second black police chief in Dallas history, who shepherded his community through last year’s shooting that left five officers dead and nine injured.

6. Christian Drag Queen Nedra Bell Finds Acceptance in the Church

"’I told one of the prophetesses I did drag. She thought it was fierce. She encouraged me to tell my bishop,’ Chris said. The reaction was more than he could have hoped for.”

7. Why I Need to Hear from a Black Preacher

“Multiplicity of voice is essential to letting Jesus lead us, and not letting us lord over him. This is why we have four gospels with four different voices of in our cannon. Our standard is not singular.”

8. Trump’s Biggest Conservative Opponents All Love the Same Theologian

The more you know: James Comey wrote his undergraduate thesis at William and Mary comparing Reinhold Niebuhr to religious right leader Jerry Falwell. Here are some takeaways.

9. Liberty University Will Pay Old Dominion $1.32 Million to Play in 2018 Home Opener Football Game

Jerry Falwell Jr.’s university just hosted President Donald Trump as its commencement speaker, during which Trump touted the school’s upcoming football schedule. The school’s athletic director Ian McCaw — who previously was AD for Baylor University during a sexual assault crisis within the football program in which he and others were tied to a pattern of cover-up — was brought on board to raise the profile of the school’s football program “to the level of Notre Dame.”

10. LGBTQ People Face Unique Challenges in the Criminal Justice System

After Chelsea Manning’s release from military prison, NBC News highlights the systemic issues facing LGBTQ people in prison: “according to a report released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2015, LGBTQ individuals are disproportionately impacted by policies that isolate and stigmatize inmates. The report found that nearly 30 percent of LGB prisoners were placed in restrictive housing compared to 18 percent of non-LGB inmates. Transgender individuals were not included in the report.”

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