I won’t impose my 21st-century language or conceptions on this person, and say that he was trans, non-binary, gender non-conforming, or queer, but it’s clear that he did not conform to the social understanding of gender binaries or sex in the ancient Greco-Roman or Jewish world. There’s no getting around that. He was also from one of the farthest-off places early Christian disciples had heard of. The Ethiopian in this text is likely not from the Ethiopia that we know today, and instead is likely from a place called Kush that today is now part of South Sudan.
Heading into an election year, directors Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss knew the importance of chronicling how young people, especially young women, are working through political disillusionment. The directors follow up their 2020 release of Boys State with a “sibling” documentary in 2024’s Girls State, which follows the week-long experience of 500 high school girls who gather for a mock-government camp in Missouri.
Many faith leaders expressed deep disappointment at the announcement. While they agree something needs to be done about increased numbers at the border, they told Sojourners that Biden’s unilateral actions are the wrong approach. They also expect the executive order to be struck down in the courts.
"A lot of psychologists, sociologists, and theologians talk about the fact that forgiveness is really for the forgiver and not the person being forgiven. But that’s not true in a lot of our American narratives [where] forgiveness is actually for the person who did the wrong, so they can be “healed.” We’ve lost the victims in that conversation."
Latinos do not always support candidates with progressive immigration policies — including policies that expand legal pathways to citizenship, enforce fewer penalties for those who immigrate without documentation, or end sanctions that devastate economies and fuel immigration. Experts and members of the community say Latinos of faith, with or without an immigration background, can feel torn between theologies that emphasize respect for the rule of law, a cultural emphasis on the family, allegiances to denominations that encourage support for conservative candidates, and their own personal trajectories.
Queer people of faith have always existed. We are here, existing now, and we will continue to exist well into the future.
I felt a sense of somber relief when I learned former President Donald J. Trump had been found guilty of 34 felony charges. Somber: It’s a sad moment when a former president is convicted of falsifying business records to cover up an alleged sexual encounter that could have hurt his presidential campaign in 2016 — a verdict that will inflame the deep divisions in our nation. Relief: This is a victory for the United States’ constitutional commitment that no one, not even a former president, is above the law.
On Oct. 14, 6-year-old Wadee Alfayoumi was stabbed to death in a Chicago suburb. Joseph Czuba, the 71-year-old man who stabbed Alfayoumi is a longtime member of a church and, according to the Will County sheriff’s office, was motivated by anti-Muslim sentiments and Israel’s war against Hamas. According to Joseph’s wife, Mary Czuba (who has filed for divorce), Czuba had been radicalized by conservative talk radio.
I live in a Chicago suburb and am the associate regional minister of American Baptist Churches Metro Chicago. When I heard Alfayoumi had been killed, I was horrified; as a mother, a Christian, a faith leader, and most of all a human, I took the news extremely hard.
Fury Road drew on Exodus imagery in Furiosa’s flight from the Citadel, leading her people to a promised land. No surprise, then, that the earlier beats of Moses’ story have striking parallels to Furiosa’s backstory.
From his booth in the exhibit hall of the Texas GOP’s 2024 convention, Steve Hotze saw an army of God assembled before him. For four decades, Hotze, an indicted election fraud conspiracy theorist, has helmed hardline anti-abortion movements and virulently homophobic campaigns against LGBTQ+ rights, comparing gay people to Nazis and helping popularize the “groomer” slur that paints them as pedophiles. Once on the fringes, Hotze said Saturday that he was pleased by the party’s growing embrace of his calls for spiritual warfare with “demonic, Satanic forces” on the left.