Breakfast in the White House can be dangerous to the prophetic vocation.
Columns
David Batstone 3-01-2001
Within the next 20 years, we'll see the evolving convergence of humans and machines.
Ed Spivey Jr. 3-01-2001
I was either having a major cardiac event or was standing in a pool of water being repeatedly struck by lightning.
Nancy Hastings Sehested 1-01-2001
"You don't know what it's like to have a husband, small children, and a congregation. There's no time for prayer."
David Batstone 1-01-2001
Grameen Bank operates beyond the bottom line to benefit those at the bottom of the line.
Jim Wallis 1-01-2001
President-elect George W. Bush, as a victor who lost the popular vote and won the presidency with a 5-4 Supreme Court decision, will face a divided nation
Elizabeth Newberry 11-01-2000
Interstate 77 winds around the mountains of Bland County like lifelines on the palm of my hand. I cross through the Big Walker Mountain tunnel and know I am home.
Ed Spivey Jr. 11-01-2000
Because our oldest daughter absolutely refuses to join the Merchant Marines after high school, she made me drive through New England this summer looking at prospective colleges.
Jim Wallis 11-01-2000
Let the good times roll! President Bill Clinton was absolutely beaming as he reported the U.S. Census Bureau's annual poverty statistics.
Chris Rice 11-01-2000
A straight-shooting white friend once commented that whenever blacks and whites are together it's like there's a "big pile of poop in the middle of the room..."
Chris Rice 9-01-2000
My former college, one of the nation’s top-ranked schools, is considering banishing a highly respected national Christian group from campus for discriminatory practices.
Amie Rose 7-01-2000
Josh and I made some important decisions on the day that we got engaged. First, we decided to retain our sanity amidst the barrage of impending wedding chaos.
Ed Spivey Jr. 7-01-2000
In just a few short months you'll wake up on a crisp Tuesday after the first Monday in November and do your part to dramatically affect the course of history.
Ed Spivey Jr. 5-01-2000
There comes a time in every man’s life when he has to begin a sentence with a really bad cliche. This is one of those times. You see, words are not coming easy to me these days. And when I do speak, I seem to be talking in gibberish, running my words together in a strange new dialect:
"YOU’REGOINGTOOFAST!" I’ll say, seemingly at random. Or I’ll blurt out "STAYINYOUROWNLANE!!"
Or even, "WATCHTHECURB!"
And I’m talking louder than I used to, as if I were trying to alert someone far away. An ambulance, perhaps.
It’s just a coincidence, of course, that this only happens when I’m in a car being driven by my 16-year-old. While technically still a child, she has earned the right to drive our 2,500-pound minivan because she passed the District of Columbia’s grueling written test, a test specifically designed to weed out incompetent drivers through the use of such demanding questions as:
- What is your name?
- What is your address?
- Do you have $14?
Jim Wallis 5-01-2000
Seattle now has nine billionaires and 10,000 millionaires, according to a National Public Radio report a few weeks ago. A recent U.S. News cover story proclaimed, "The Rich Are Getting Richer." Housing prices in economic boom towns like San Francisco leave us in stunned disbelief, as do amazing news reports of investors who gain or lose $6 billion in one week’s stock market trading. Even the overused phrase "record breaking economy" seems old hat now when there are new milestones reached and records broken almost every day.
Clearly the "permanent boom" has done a lot of individual good for many people. But what will it mean for the common good? The same NPR report told of the ever-widening gap between rich and poor and the crumbling of public institutions such as schools. The rates of evictions and homelessness in San Francisco are also skyrocketing, and a very troubling moral picture is emerging. In the same news program, we hear that NASDAQ has reached an all-time high, then learn that new studies show alarming child-poverty rates. We learn that the number of U.S. millionaires has quadrupled from 2 million to 8 million in the last 10 years, but that 1.3 million people will become homeless sometime this year and 30 million people will experience "food scarcity," otherwise known as hunger. A recent New York Times Sunday Magazine cover story speaks of "The Invisible Poor," while a front page piece the same week in the Times explores the consequences of a new syndrome called "affluenza" on the children of the rich.
These gaping moral contradictions and growing spiritual concerns are beginning to awaken the churches, in particular, to their responsibilities and, indeed, to their prophetic vocation. For the first time in more than 100 years, churches from across the political spectrum are coming together on a social issue—poverty. The growing unity includes black churches, Catholics, mainline Protestants, and even conservative evangelicals who recently have been more known for their involvement in other social issues.