Lenten fasting, Wilberforce’s drug addiction, cracks in the GOP-evangelical alliance, and more.
On Saturday, L’Arche International — a network of more than 154 communities in 38 countries where people with intellectual disabilities and those without intellectual disabilities live together in community to "work together to build a more human society" — announced the results of an investigation it commissioned last year into L’Arche founder Jean Vanier, who died in 2019. The investigation revealed that that Vanier “has been accused of manipulative sexual relationships and emotional abuse between 1970 and 2005, usually within a relational context where he exercised significant power and a psychological hold over the alleged victims,” as Tina Bovermann, Executive Director of L’Arche USA put it in a letter describing the investigation and its findings.
The acknowledgment of Wilberforce’s addiction does not tarnish his story — it completes it. His life can teach us that while addictions are harmful in and of themselves, many of the other negative consequences we often associate with addiction are created or exacerbated by how we treat those with addictions.
In The Inheritance, currently on Broadway through mid-March, a century-old English novel (E.M. Forster’s Howards End) gently soundtracks, or perhaps orchestrates, the lives of gay men in their 30s during the period when President Obama was moving out of office, President Trump was moving in, and many of us wondered just where on earth we were.
Tit-for-tat killings had started between Christians and Muslims in Jos. In Muslim-dominated areas, Muslims roamed the streets and singled out Christians. In Christian-dominated areas, the Christians retaliated with killings Muslims. Cars, houses, and churches were burned to the ground.
The pope made his appeal to tone things down while speaking to tens of thousands of people in St. Peter's Square
A report today released by the United Church of Christ identifies the nation’s “Toxic 100” super polluters, naming the factories and facilities responsible for nearly half the toxic air emissions in hundreds of neighborhoods across 28 states. Alongside the report, Breath to the People: Sacred Air and Toxic Pollution, the UCC provides an interactive map, because they believe parents have the right know where these polluters operate. Like toxic water, toxic air is irreversibly harming children across our nation.
Today, the Reclaiming Jesus elders are again calling us to liberation in public witness, but through means other than a rousing church service and candlelit procession to the White House. This time, the journey moves through time (40+ days) rather than space, and the destination is not the presidential residence but something a bit closer to home, if more difficult to reach: our own souls.
A nun’s Amazon journey, racist abolitionists, your right to vote, and more.
Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have called on the Trump administration to impose sanctions on Egyptian officials responsible for imprisoning Kassem.