There are moments when a system fails so completely that it reveals its design. For me, that moment was in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast. I watched from Newark as floodwaters submerged New Orleans, Black families were stranded on rooftops and packed into the Superdome while the state and national media moved with a deadly indifference. As a young adult, I learned something important: Systems don’t collapse; they are disinvested in and allowed to fail when people are deemed expendable.
It was 23 years ago that Rev. Jeremiah Wright delivered one of the most profound and misunderstood sermons in U.S. history. In “Confusing God and Government,” delivered on Palm Sunday in 2003, Wright tells the story of race and war throughout U.S. history, arguing that the country had failed Black and Indigenous populations. Toward the sermon’s climactic end, Rev. Wright stated, “No, no, no. Not ‘God Bless America;’ God Damn America! That’s in the Bible, for killing innocent people. God Damn America for treating her citizen[s] as less than human. God Damn America, as long as she tries to act like she is God and she is supreme!” This moment would cause controversy during the 2008 presidential campaign, when Barack Obama, who attended Wright’s church, was accused of anti-Americanism.
But Wright was right. If the United States, as a nation, has a soul, it is currently hellbound.
Before allegedly attempting to assassinate the president, Cole Tomas Allen reportedly wrote his motivations and answered objections in a brief, 1,000-word manifesto. The first objection was that Christians ought to turn the other cheek.
Faith leaders joined civic leaders in raising alarm over a recent Supreme Court ruling that experts say could significantly reshape how states apply one of the country’s core protections for minority voting rights. The Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais to block Louisiana from using a racially contested congressional map did not formally overturn Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, but in her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan warned that the ruling has rendered it “all but a dead letter.”
Civil rights organizations and faith leaders immediately shared the sentiment that the conservative court was continuing to eviscerate the Voting Rights Act of 1965 one section at a time.
“The Supreme Court’s decision falsely claims fidelity to the law while stripping it of its power,” said the National Council of Churches in a written statement. “By invalidating a district created to reflect Louisiana's racial and political diversity, and comply with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the Supreme Court decision silences voices that the Voting Rights Act was designed to uplift. Such an action does not restore our democracy; it wounds it. At a time when the nation should be working to strengthen representation and public trust, this decision moves us backward.”
The Supreme Court has sided with a coalition of anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers in its fight against the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office, finding a subpoena that state investigators issued for donor information unconstitutionally chilled the centers’ free speech and association rights.
In a unanimous decision issued Wednesday, Justice Neil Gorsuch reversed an appellate court’s ruling that had prevented First Choice Women’s Resource Centers Inc., from airing their constitutional objections to the state’s probe and investigative practices in federal court. Gorsuch’s ruling returns the case to U.S. District Court.
When Jim Hall and Bob Bruce, who have been best friends for over 50 years, heard about the Buddhist monks who walked for peace earlier this year, they had an idea: What if they did a walk of their own, one that focused on building bridges across faith and politics?
The plan quickly took shape, leading to the kindness walk that the duo have planned Aug. 12-20.
The nine-day walk will cross nearly 90 miles and several faith communities between Shoreline and Olympia, Wa.
I’ve heard the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness described as a warning against testing God. Maybe. But lately I’ve been thinking that the story is about testing your luck.
Here’s how the scene might look in 2026: The devil isn’t a shadowy figure on a mountaintop. He’s a sleek betting app. A notification lights up the screen: Turn this stone into bread. Massive payout. No one will know. Another notification appears: Jump from the temple. Stick the landing. Viral moment. Your followers will explode. Then there is the final notification, the final temptation: Bow to me just once. Lifetime guarantee. Unlimited upside. In the story, Jesus swipes away the temptation for the massive payout. But today, with the rise of predictive markets and sports gambling, it’s getting hard for us to do the same. It’s harder to resist this modern temptation because, for a lot of people, it now takes something big just to get by.
As of this writing, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s sci-fi epic, Project Hail Mary, is the third-highest-grossing film this year. For a book adaptation that explores heady sci-fi concepts, that’s no small feat, and it’s clearly struck a chord with viewers. Before NASA’s Artemis II expedition launched, the crew watched a screening of the film.
Space films and space expeditions can both inspire a particular type of awe. I think of the striking photos by the Artemis crew during their expedition, particularly the one where we see Earth partially hidden.
I have never felt so alone as when I was caring daily for my father, who has advanced dementia. It wasn’t that I was actually alone. I had a loving family surrounding me, including my mom and brother; we had weekly care plan meetings where we would try to understand my dad’s patterns, his growing agitation, and what we might do to ease his suffering and sustain our village of care.
But even with that loving collaboration—more than most people have when they are in the throes of caring for loved ones with dementia—we felt deeply isolated from the wider world. A neighbor we’d never met came and knocked on our door one day, chastising my mom for not keeping better track of my wandering dad. The cashier at the local natural food store looked angry as my dad grabbed a day-old muffin and began unwrapping it before we’d paid for it. (He’d lost all sense of the norms regarding paying for things.) Bringing him with me on errands was the only way I could manage it all as a “sandwich generation caregiver” (a popular shorthand for caring for children and aging parents at the same time), and yet I knew that his presence would complicate everything and leave me even more depleted.
“There’s no opening yourself up to the full depth of joy without also allowing yourself the possibility of destruction.”
I’m talking to folk-punk musician and performer Shaun Bengson on Zoom when he says this. He and his wife Abigail have been performing their latest musical memoir in New York. Entitled My Joy Is Heavy!, the show recalls their experience getting pregnant and then enduring a miscarriage during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, all while caring for their young son.