I recently spent a week on Robben Island, the prison where Nelson Mandela spent the first 18 of his 27 years imprisonment. The Warehouse gathered together about 80 peace activists from around the world and South Africa to discuss, reflect, and meditate about the struggle against the apartheid system. Robben Island is now a World Heritage protected museum visited by thousands of tourists every year. It is used to teach current and future generations about lessons from this painful episode of South African history. Standing in those tiny prison cells, I travelled back in time and imagined life under apartheid: the mere injustice of the system, the dehumanizing treatment, the humiliation.
The couple has found that part of their calling in these schools is not just to the children, but also to the teachers who serve those children. Cheryl has taken to performing regular acts of kindness for the teachers — showing up in the teachers’ lounge with a plate of cookies, or stopping by the main office to give a hug to the administrator in charge of discipline.
“I tell her, ‘I’m sure you’ve had a rough day today. Can I give you a hug?’ I just never knew it would make such a difference. [They] feel so supported,” said Cheryl.
The men in black uniforms stand behind their prisoners, who kneel on the beach. The kneeling men wear bright orange jumpsuits. The men wearing black, terrorists affiliated with ISIS, hold knives. A subtitle on the video reads: “The people of the cross, the followers of the hostile Egyptian church.” The spokesman addresses the camera, and then the prisoners are beheaded.
For years, I’ve had a rocky relationship with the news. I love to know what’s going on in the world, but I can’t help but notice that the news sources I read all present the story from a definite slant. More and more over the last couple years, I’ve felt like I’m doing battle with the newspaper every morning. Each day, the media machine is telling me who I should vote for, what to buy, what new disease to fear, and who my country should kill.
The death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is a major setback for the conservative legal movement, as will become clear in the months ahead.
This was to be the term conservatives roared back after one in which the court’s liberal bloc won most of the important cases, such as same-sex marriage and Obamacare. On tap to be decided in the next four months are cases affecting abortion rights, affirmative action, voting rights, the power of labor unions and President Obama’s health care and immigration policies — and conservatives stood at least a chance of winning them all.
Rev. Michael Piazza is well known for developing Dallas’s Cathedral of Hope, the first predominantly LGBT church in the country. The Cathedral of Hope grew from a store-front church into a megachurch with a message of inclusivity, love, and justice. I am taking a class taught by Rev. Piazza this semester, and with us he recently shared a compelling insight. Rev. Piazza believes that America will have another Great Awakening.
I think that the time for that awakening could be right now, and Beyoncé’s documentary does a stellar job of showing us why.
Rape. Domestic Violence. Acid Burnings. Female Infanticide. Human Trafficking. Emotional Abuse. Sexual Harassment. Genital Mutilation. These are just a few forms of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) that women and girls endure on a daily basis. But these assaults on the human spirit and sacred worth of women and girls will not have the last word.
Antonin Scalia, leading figure of the conservative wing of the Supreme Court, has died at age 79. He died, apparently of natural causes, while on vacation in Texas.
Germany’s Christian churches, long the most positive voices greeting waves of Middle Eastern refugees pouring into the country in recent months, have begun to admit the need to limit the flow now that public opinion towards the newcomers has turned from welcoming to wary.
Catholic and Protestant church leaders fully backed Chancellor Angela Merkel’s original open-door policy announced on Sept. 4, framing it as wealthy Germany’s Christian duty to offer refuge to all Syrians and others fleeing civil war in their home countries.
Rape. Domestic Violence. Acid Burnings. Female Infanticide. Human Trafficking. Emotional Abuse. Sexual Harassment. Genital Mutilation. These are just a few forms of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) that women and girls endure on a daily basis. But these assaults on the human spirit and sacred worth of women and girls will not have the last word.