Arts & Culture
Image via Everett Historica/Shutterstock
No one cared to get to know the man that they were killing — in Jesus’ case, and in the case of my friend. The judges and governor had made up their mind on who he was based on media headlines. No one saw any need to sit with the man who was on the execution table, to find out if his life had changed and whether or not he was having a positive influence on those around him. They defined him by a crime he had committed years ago.
While watching the film, seeing one friend sacrifice so much so that the other could have this experience, it becomes clear that the pilgrimage I’ll Push You takes us on is the way of love.
As someone who served as a fulltime Christian minister for more than a dozen years, and who later worked for a nonprofit that mobilized men and boys to advocate for women and girls, I’d like to take a moment to focus on the role of churches. I believe that churches must change how they address sexual violence.
A woman is aided by first responders after sustaining injury on a bike path in lower Manhattan on Oct. 31. Image via Reuters/Brendan McDermid
The New York City Police Department, in a post on Twitter, said that one vehicle struck another, then the driver of one of the vehicles "got out displaying imitation firearms and was shot by police."
Police said the suspect was taken into custody.
Image via Suburbicon trailer
George Clooney’s new film Suburbicon is very obviously a response to the MAGA line of thinking. The film uses two parallel stories to explore both the hidden nastiness of the archetypal white, suburban family, and the day-to-day racism faced by an African American family trying to achieve their own American dream. It’s a setup ripe with allegorical potential, but while Suburbicon is built on good bones, it’s an unfocused mess that wastes its opportunity.
On the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, a look at some of the details of its most well-known leader’s life — a reformer, though far from modern: “Unless we appreciate his thought in its own, unfamiliar and often uncomfortable terms, we will not see what it might have to offer to us today.”
2. The Dark History Behind Letting Male ‘Geniuses’ Get Away with ‘Bad Behavior’
“The convenient narrative by which male artists are able to claim that this case of seducing a young female artist is so special that it is unlike all the others that have come before it, or will come after, is exactly that — convenient. Not only is this untrue in a moral sense, it’s also historically untrue.”
Josh believes that by joining the priesthood, he can legitimately run away from the guilt of leaving Rebecca because he’s doing a noble thing. In a song-and-dance number in this season’s second episode, called “I’ve Got My Head in the Clouds,” he sings, “No obligations are holding me down/that’s what religion is for.” (He later refers to God as his “E-ZPass.”)
Reading and hearing the stories of sexual predator Harvey Weinstein's assaults against so many women has been painful for all of us. The sense of powerful male entitlement to harass, abuse, or assault whomever they want, and by any means necessary, crosses political lines from Weinstein to Bill O’Reilly and Roger Ailes of Fox News, to Bill Clinton, to current President of the United States Donald Trump. From Hollywood, to the media, to Washington, to workplaces and college campuses and even churches in our country and beyond, this male predatory behavior is common. This Sunday’s Washington Post Outlook cover headline put it well: “A World of Weinsteins."
On Oct. 21, that same intentional Berkeley housing encampment — which has peacefully existed in its current location for the last nine months, was served a 72-hour eviction notice by the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) police by request from the City of Berkeley. Despite receiving over 3 million dollars in grants to expand housing, the City of Berkeley invests more of its time and resources displacing marginalized communities.
Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) walks past journalists after announcing he will not run for reelection. Oct. 24, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
Yesterday, Republican Sen. Jeff Flake said in a statement, “Mister President, I rise today to say: enough.”
Enough.
I wonder what it might mean if we said that and really meant it.
As Christians.
As Americans.
As human beings.
Image via RNS
Amid revelations that extremist groups have exploited social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to influence voters and steer readers toward fake-news, the nation’s premier anti-Semitism watchdog is training its eye on the tech world to combat hate speech online.
The Anti-Defamation League will hold a summit in San Francisco on Nov. 13 featuring Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, along with executives from Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit to discuss ways of fighting the growing menace of cyber hate.
Image via Menachem Wecker / Sojourners.
It’s easy to associate the worst crimes of the Nazi regime with the leading villains — Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels. But it took countless faceless bureaucrats, sitting in offices, pushing paper, and drafting plans, to enable the Nazi state. The manufacturer J.A. Topf built the crematoria, and coal miners and steel makers produced raw materials for the machinery of the concentration camps.
Image via Shutterstock.com/Katherine Welles
The three white nationalists, Tyler Tenbrink, William Fears, and Colton Fears, were charged with attempted homicide by Gainesville police.
Image via Shutterstock.com
Global pollution accounts for approximately 9 million premature deaths every year, according to a report by The Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health.
The comprehensive study found that pollution is linked to 1-in-6 deaths globally — accounting for three times more than AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined, The Guardian reports.
2. On the Political Uses of Evil
The trouble with contemporary political uses of evil isn’t the concept itself, but rather the intentional vagueness thrust upon it by an era without any well-defined theory of the good.”
Image via Abd. Halim Hadi/ shutterstock
4. Do not wait to have a daughter to finally respect women.
You can respect us because we are human, with all of the glory, nuance, and mess that comes with it. You do not need to imagine a woman as your mother or aunt or cousin to respect her. You can respect her because of the soul that she carries and the life that she lives. Her relationship to you, her partner, her father, or anyone else should not be what defines your respect.
Image via Shutterstock.com
"On one side, it's a bold declarative statement that 'I'm not ashamed' and 'I'm not alone.' On the other side, it's a statement from survivor to survivor that says 'I see you, I hear you, I understand you and I'm here for you or I get it," says Tarana Burke.
Women are showing that, despite being subject to the most violent and forceful manifestations of our patriarchal society and culture, they are willing to stand up in defiance and in solidarity to ensure that we as a society no longer allow incidents of sexual harassment and violence to go unchallenged, unnoticed, and unbelieved. And almost certainly, many other women who have experienced harassment or assault have decided understandably not to speak out. “Survivors don’t owe us their stories” explained Alexis Benveniste on twitter.
1. Let’s start with this — if you are not a person who ethnically identifies as black (truly black — please miss me entirely with any Rachel Dolezal references), you cannot use the N-word. Not in a song. Not ever. I am not going to apologize for this. I am not going to engage in conversations about “rights” as it relates to freedom of speech. You do not have the right to comment on how this word is used by black people within the black community. This word has been bought and paid for through the hundreds of thousands of bodies/lives. I fully recognize that entitlement doesn’t ever want to be told what it can and cannot hold. But entitlement has blood on its hands that it has not yet truly begun to atone for, so I want to say this (and please hear me): This word does not belong to you.
Image via RNS
“I have a religion — but you will call it blasphemy,” he wrote in a letter in 1865. “It is that there is a God for the rich man but none for the poor … Perhaps your religion will sustain you, will feed you — I place no dependence in mine. Our religions are alike, though, in one respect — neither can make a man happy when he is out of luck.”