No Christian leader has influenced my faith and activism as much as Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — but the day we devote to his legacy often leaves me frustrated. There’s a bitter irony in a nation that takes a day off to celebrate King’s life and work while that same nation is experiencing a deep backlash against racial justice.
In Proverbs 22:6, the author commends parents and educators to “train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” Yet thanks to harsh school punishment policies, including suspension for preschoolers, many children are being trained to see their own typical emotional or academic frustrations as cause for strict discipline — or even incarceration.
Posting a fake acceptance letter to Bible school is an unusual way to promote a rap single, but Lil Nas X’s self-proclaimed “Christian era” has brought just that.
Tran won’t settle for simply critiquing racial capitalism or popular anti-racist enterprises that steer clear of economics. Tran believes that Christian theology offers an alternative story to the economy of racial capitalism, an alternative that finds its locus in what he describes as the “divine economy.”
Pope Francis, tackling conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine in his yearly address to diplomats, said on Monday that “indiscriminately striking” civilians is a war crime because it violates international humanitarian law.
Pope Francis called on Monday for a global ban on parenting via surrogacy, calling the practice “deplorable” and a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child. Francis' remarks are likely to antagonize pro-LGBTQ+ groups, since surrogacy is often used by gay or lesbian partners who want to have children, and follow his landmark decision to allow priests to bless same-sex couples.
The Vatican on Thursday moved to calm Catholic bishops in some countries who have balked over last month's approval of blessings for same-sex couples, telling them that the measure is not “heretical” or “blasphemous.” In a five-page statement, the Vatican's doctrinal office also acknowledged that such blessings could be “imprudent” in some countries where people who receive them might become targets of violence, or risk prison or even death.
According to recent polling from the Washington Post and the University of Maryland, Republicans are now “more sympathetic to those who stormed the U.S. Capitol and more likely to absolve Donald Trump of responsibility for the attack than they were in 2021.” The same polling found that Americans were now slightly less likely to believe that President Joe Biden’s win was legitimate and more likely to believe there was “solid evidence” of voter fraud.
In October of last year, 33 states sued Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, alleging that the company has “concealed the ways in which these Platforms exploit and manipulate its most vulnerable consumers: teenagers and children.” The lawsuit further alleges that the company “repeatedly mislead the public about the substantial dangers of its Social Media Platforms.” The most recent lawsuits make it clear that churches, that are operating large numbers of social media accounts, must do some soul-searching about whether they should stay on platforms that are causing harm to young people.
The Cagles are co-organizers of Jubilee House, a nonprofit ministry based in Parrish with multiple initiatives, including operating a free store and free pantry, passing out free naloxone to combat the opioid crisis, and reclaiming an old football field as a farm. Together, they work to sow a type of Christianity that would revitalize the literal and metaphorical soil of the Bible Belt.