When’s the last time you saw a play in which the main character was a black woman? If you’ve never seen one, you’re likely not alone. Although it’s the year 2020, and within the past year Slave Play and American Son were on Broadway, the number of American plays with black women as their leads staged in America still has immense room for improvement. As of today, zero are slated to appear on Broadway during the rest of the 2019-2020 season and the entirety of the 2020-2021 season. That’s why it’s shocking that, 55 years ago, The Amen Corner, a three-act play about a black woman pastoring a Pentecostal church in Harlem, N.Y., opened on Broadway, albeit more than a decade after its birth.
Of course, dirt also tells stories of human triumph and transgression. With one scan from an X-ray fluorescence gun, you can tell whether a soil sample came from Cambridge or Dorchester, based on the amount of lead particulates present. A Ziploc bag full of dirt is also a history of redlining, white flight, and devastating arson, committed by property owners for whom the cost of maintaining the land surpassed the worth of those who called it home. Dirt is an archive of human attitudes toward the nonhuman world — our hubris in thinking ourselves separate from it, though we arose from it, and will inevitably return to it.
Sojourners was among the first to say the oft-repeated refrain that a budget is a moral document. Of course, that’s still true. Whether for a single household, an organization, or an entire nation, a budget offers a sense of the moral values of the people who create it. It shows who and what do and do not matter — what the priorities are — for the family or church or Congress or the White House.
“Every week, almost daily, I see patients who cannot afford care, can’t afford their medication."
Last week, President Donald Trump spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast, an annual bipartisan event that brings together faith leaders and members of Congress. Using language like “I’ve been with you,” and “you better get out and vote on Nov. 3” — insinuating all those of faith gathered align with the president — Trump called once again on support from his most loyal followers: white evangelical Protestants.
A commitment to justice or equality cannot be purely voyeuristic or touristic.
In this week's Phenomenal Women of Black History, we're featuring Pauli Murray, an activist and writer who became the first African-American woman to become a priest in the Episcopal church.
The prevailing stereotype of unpredictable and hypersexualized brown women’s bodies.
Richard Rohr’s universalism, religious liberty, National Prayer Breakfast, Shakira, and more.
I did not attend the National Prayer Breakfast this morning, though I have done so in the past. The longtime Washington tradition brings together members of Congress from both political parties along with thousands of faith leaders, and every president since Dwight D. Eisenhower has attended. But this is not a time in our nation for habitual or vague prayers for an audience, given the moral and political crisis we now find ourselves in — or one that starts with the president of the United States holding up a newspaper headline saying “Acquitted,” and quickly invoking an impeachment process corrupted by partisan politics.