Today is a day for magical thinking. The date — 2/22/22 — is a palindrome: Whether you read it forward or backward, the date is identical. Because the day also falls on a Tuesday, particularly enthusiastic followers of palindrome dates have been calling today “Twosday.”
The three white men convicted of chasing down and murdering a young Black man, Ahmaud Arbery, as he was out jogging in their suburban Georgia community, were found guilty on Tuesday of committing federal hate crimes and other offenses in the 2020 killing.
If we analyze our current conditions, avoid circular debates, stop waiting for heroes to save us, speak honestly about our past and present, and try to change today, we might just save tomorrow.
The term, “Black radical tradition” was coined in 1983 by Cedric J. Robinson, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Robinson saw the tradition as encompassing a host of movements — from antebellum rebellions against slave owners, to pan-Africanism, and Black Power. He defined the tradition as, “the continuing development of a collective consciousness informed by the historical struggles for liberation” in his book Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition.
While white evangelical support has decreased, Black Protestant support for a pathway to citizenship increased from 70 percent in 2013 to 75 percent in 2021. Advocates are still working to pass a pathway to citizenship this spring. Immigration justice work is now widely recognized as anti-racism work — work to dismantle the systems of white supremacy that oppress us all. Our theology of the imago dei, of the image of God in every person, fuels both our voter protection advocacy and our work to create a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrant people. We are working to honor the God-given dignity and full personhood of every person by securing the legal right to vote and a legal status for undocumented immigrant people.
Looking at Kanye West can be both difficult and easy. Easy because of his genius: how he put Chicago on the map as a hub for brilliant rap music, widened the lane for non-gangster rappers, and somehow made tunes seriously considering Jesus so sonically innovative and catchy that some become radio staples, paving the path for Kendrick Lamar and Chance the Rapper. Difficult because of his public antics: the outbursts, the flamboyance, the drama. Recently Kanye’s displays have even become dangerous, harassing his wife Kim Kardashian, who has filed for divorce, and threatening her rumored boyfriend Pete Davidson.
With scholarly precision and an ability to engage beyond the tired critiques of right-wing Christianity, Hendricks imagines a version of Christianity that is politically committed to social justice. Whether it is through his experience growing up in the Black church, his commitment to the revolutionary nature of Jesus’ teachings, or his insistence that leftist politics and Christianity can inform one another, Hendricks demonstrates the beauty of the Christian faith.
As Baptist minister and CEO of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, Zeh has participated in plenty of “circular conversations regarding the moral absolutes of abortion.” But as she writes in her new book, A Complicated Choice: Making Space for Grief and Healing in the Pro-Choice Movement, these debates often overlook how abortion always “happens within a person’s real, full, and complex life.”
One of the defining features of cosmopolitan Protestantism is the sweet little promise — whispered even — that Christianity is not going to ruin your life. You can still love salty language (and I do) and feel justified by holding prevailing opinions (which I do) and have many mild to moderate faults that are not polite for me to mention. Its wonderful accommodation to modernity has liberated the church from a great many sins (Phariseeism, disembodied love, political acquiescence, etc.), but I’m afraid it has laid itself quite open to the glories of idolatry. And let me be clear, idolatry — which is to say, comforting false images of a true God — is the most fun in town.
Valentine’s Day is the day of romantic love. If we take our cues from advertisements, it’s an opportunity to purchase and consume flower bouquets, candies, chocolate-covered strawberries, and frilly negligees — gifts we bestow upon our beloveds to show the depths of our love. But many of the gifts we give on Valentine’s Day are made available for our consumption through the exploitation of others; they convey romantic love at the expense of love of neighbor.