You might think that the people who most fundamentally believe in humanity’s fallen, sinful nature — Calvinists — would also be the most reticent to concentrate power in a small sect of humans.
But often, as Kristin Kobes Du Mez told me in our interview, Calvinists are one of the Christian groups on the front lines of movements where power is concentrated in singular leaders, singular expressions of Christianity, or singular heads-of-households. Kobes Du Mez, a historian at Calvin University , finds this baffling, but can’t deny that the movements are linked. As she sees it, Christian patriarchy, Christian nationalism, and anti-democracy movements are connected by their approach to power.
In a new documentary short, For Our Daughters, Kobes Du Mez and director Carl Byker address the connection of these movements through the stories of sexual abuse victim-advocates: Rachael Denhollander, Cait West, Christa Brown, and others tell the stories of how sexual abuse was allowed, ignored, or covered-up in their communities while analyzing what Christianity has to say about it.
Gutierrez had systematized a living, collaborative, community movement in his ground-breaking work, A Theology of Liberation, published in 1971 in Spanish and two years later in English. Over decades, clerics and community leaders, men and women, across cultures, identities, and denominations, all had contributed, in the smallest way, to the construction of this new way of thinking about — and acting toward — God and God’s glorious creation.
“This to me is one of the most consequential things I’ve ever had an opportunity to do in my whole career,” Biden said in his apology at an outdoor football and track field in Laveen Village, Arizona, near Phoenix. “It’s a sin on our soul. ... I formally apologize.”
Directed by Oscar-winner Edward Berger (All Quiet on the Western Front), Conclave begins when the pope dies unexpectedly. To elect the next pontiff, the College of Cardinals convenes in the Vatican, entering total seclusion from the outside world until a majority vote can be reached. But if God is working through the cardinals, so too is something darker: ugly hunger for power and bitter ideological divide.
“Fascist” isn’t a word I ever use lightly. It’s not a word that resonates with most Americans, and I’ve worried using that word will only further polarize our deeply divided nation. But Trump’s escalating rhetoric, especially over the past few months, calls for moral clarity: It is time to state emphatically that Trump’s rhetoric is increasingly and dangerously fascist. Since we know that this kind of language creates a permission structure to justify and incite violence, Christians of all stripes must condemn language that crosses that line.
In an interview with NBC’s Hallie Jackson on Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris suggested she would not make concessions for religious exemptions on abortion laws, one of her strongest allusions yet to where she plans to take the abortion debate if she wins the White House in November.
The Biden administration's proposal to require private insurance agencies to cover certain over-the-counter contraceptives is getting nods of approval from faith-based reproductive rights advocates. But it’s unclear how other religious groups will respond.
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.