In the first few moments of Exhibiting Forgiveness, La’Ron (John Earl Jelks) is beaten after he defends a store clerk in a convenience store robbery. The violence, like most of the violence in the film, is just out of view. Soon the scene shifts and Tarrell (André Holland) wakes from a nightmare. His wife Aisha (Andra Day) reassures Tarrell that he is safe in the beautiful world they are building for themselves as artists and parents.
As an adult, I’ve been in many so-called “diverse communities” where there is a lot of racial diversity, but culturally and experientially, it felt very similar to the predominately white church I grew up attending for Sunday school. From the way we worshiped to the food we ate together afterward, these interracial churches seemed to only work because they were comfortable places for white people. In these integrated congregations, white people would often say to me, an Asian American, that they felt so grateful to have so many different experiences and viewpoints reflected in the congregation (“We’re learning so much from different communities”). But those viewpoints were never reflected on the leadership team.
Bill Pannell was an evangelical in the truest and best sense of that word. He believed fervently that humanity needed to be reconciled to God, and to each other. But he was a Black evangelical, who were and are still so different from white evangelicals in America. And that made all the difference in this disciple’s pilgrimage that has now been documented for us.
God’s first house — the tabernacle — is movable, following the Israelites as they wander from Egypt to Canaan (Exodus 40:34; Numbers 1:47-53). The theme of migration continues into Jesus’ life, where Matthew’s gospel tells us that he fled political violence and spent much of his childhood in Egypt (Matthew 2:13-23). Even when he is back in his own country, he is unwelcome in his hometown and “has nowhere to lay his head” (Matthew 8:20).
In this virtual conversation moderated by Sojourners editor in chief Betsy Shirley, panelists Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, Rev. Caleb E. Campbell, Rev. Pamela Cooper White, and Sojourners president Rev. Adam Russell Taylor explored hopeful actions that can counter the dangerous beliefs and strategies of Christian nationalism.
Early in the morning on Oct. 3, reproductive choice advocacy group Catholics for Choice unfurled a 50-foot long, 41-pound quilt on the road leading to St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City. Their words, written in bold, large letters across the bottom of the quilt summed up their message: “POPE FRANCIS, LISTEN.”
“Some people out there in the readership are all in a tizzy that ‘Richard Hays has changed his mind! He’s changed sides! He’s not on our team anymore!’ They think this is some kind of a radical reversal. In spite of what he wrote in the first book, [The Widening of God’s Mercy] is consistent with the man that I had grown up with and known my entire life.”
As an opinion journalist who is also a Christian, I believe my primary responsibility is to provide a myriad of perspectives that challenge or — when necessary — correct readers’ opinions, all in the hope that through reading Sojourners’ opinion section they might realize that Christ is inviting them to make the world a more just place.
For several years, I pastored a small church in the Northwest Bronx. In the summer of 2022, the church leadership decided to dedicate one Sunday a month to do a service project where we engaged in direct political action. It was the summer when Roe v. Wade was overturned, and we focused our attention on reproductive justice. Instead of simply looking at reproductive justice as a pregnant person’s right to receive an abortion, we started thinking of it in broader terms: a better family welfare system in the U.S., honoring the bodily autonomy of birthing people, and taking steps toward improving the material conditions of Black and brown children in the Bronx through mutual aid, collective care, political education, and political solidarity.
The present political and religious environment is both intense and toxic, making any judgements about Israel and Palestine perilous. Anyone who dares speak is immediately subject to interrogation, often followed by indictments of antisemitism, or religious zealotry, or blind ideological bias. It’s hard to articulate a message that cuts beneath entrenched, polarized rhetoric — and even harder to listen. But we must try to speak, for silence is complicit resignation to evil, terror, and calamity.