On a macro level, however, The Look of Silence is equally important in its examinations of evil, guilt, consequence, and forgiveness. It’s a horrifying document of the cruelty humans are capable of, and the ways we try to justify our sins, especially those that are very clearly unjustified. It’s also an incredible example of the courage and grace to seek reconciliation — which, through Adi’s example, Oppenheimer shows we’re equally capable of. The Look of Silence is required viewing, equal parts frightening and beautiful, much like the landscape it portrays.
Fifty years after the signing of the Voting Rights Act, the president of the Progressive National Baptist Convention said black churches will be redoubling efforts to maintain access to the ballot box.
The act, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson 50 years ago Aug. 6, was a crowning achievement of the civil rights movement. But in 2013 the Supreme Court invalidated key provisions, and many states, nearly all of them under Republican control, passed new voting restrictions that critics say target minority voters.
Today is the 50th anniversary of the landmark Voting Rights Act, passed Aug, 6, 1965. The act, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, created key provisions to prevent racial discrimination in voting laws.
The Voting Rights Act has been called "the single most effective piece of civil rights legislation ever passed by Congress."
Today's anniversary is a bittersweet commemoration. In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down Section 4, which had required Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia to seek federal approval before imposing changes to voter laws.
After international outcry, two South Sudanese Presbyterian Evangelical Church pastors who faced a possible death sentence in Sudan have been set free after a court hearing Aug. 5.
The Rev. Michael Yat and the Rev. Peter Reith were on trial in Khartoum on criminal charges of undermining the constitutional system, espionage, promoting hatred among sects, breach of public peace, and offenses relating to insulting religious beliefs. The first two charges are punishable by the death penalty or life imprisonment.
The huge Lynchburg, Virginia, campus was started by the late Jerry Falwell, founder of Moral Majority, one of the main engines behind the launch of the religious right, and it is currently headed by Falwell’s son, Jerry Falwell, Jr.
It’s also become a key venue for Republican candidates looking to shore up their bona fides with key evangelical Christian voters.
So why did Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont, accept Falwell’s invitation to address upwards of 12,000 students and faculty on Sept. 14?
Faith-based food trucks are building momentum across the country. In St. Paul, Minn., Lutheran pastor Margaret Kelly’s church is actually a food truck, providing free food and prayers to homeless and impoverished members of the community.
Back in Texas, the Chow Train in San Antonio has been making national headlines for fearlessly serving homeless residents despite a $2,000 fine in April for serving food from the back of a private vehicle.
Influenced in her early 20s by the civil rights movement, Barbara learned about Sojourners during the time that she and her husband served in Tanzania with the Peace Corps. Experiences interacting with folks diverse in religious belief and race during this time profoundly influenced her understanding of faith and social justice. She shares that her life has been influenced by Catholics and Mennonites, pagans and Methodists, Anglicans, Quakers, Hindus, and Buddhists: “At the core, a lot of us on the planet are looking for the same thing: to get along with one another, to have enough to eat, [and] to be able to live with some measure of safety and security.”
The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by any civilized standards, represented one of the moral low-points in human history. After all, by very conservative estimates, 135,000 people died from the atomic blasts—most of them civilians, the victims of the intentional targeting of cities. Think about that—these weren’t military targets, but cities full of men, women, and children, going about their lives, destroyed in seconds by the most destructive weapons ever invented.
But the point of memorializing isn’t about the past. It’s about ensuring such things happen “never again.”
I do believe that we are called to purity: a comprehensive purity that encompasses our sexual nature and other parts of our life. The apostle James saves harsh words for people who aren’t pure in their words (see his metaphor of fresh and salt water) and in their care for the poor, just as Paul explicitly calls us to sexual purity. Holiness requires a holistic purity. As Augustine — along with the vast majority of Christian tradition — teaches, purity is an attribute of the soul, not of the body.
More than this, a lack of purity endangers not the nation (to which Christians owe respect), but the church (which is our family). This is why Paul is so concerned about impurity in 1 Corinthians 5 — it doesn’t fit with our calling as a church. If we adopt a nationalistic rhetoric around purity, we shift our primary loyalty from the church to the nation, with devastating consequences for our Christian life.
Christians can't ignore an imperative to purity. But we also must avoid shaming people and continuing the toxic messages of apocalypticism and nationalism that Moslener records in Virgin Nation. Contrary to those arguments, our lack of sexual purity doesn’t doom our nation. But a lack of holistic purity might kill our church.