“Some people out there in the readership are all in a tizzy that ‘Richard Hays has changed his mind! He’s changed sides! He’s not on our team anymore!’ They think this is some kind of a radical reversal. In spite of what he wrote in the first book, [The Widening of God’s Mercy] is consistent with the man that I had grown up with and known my entire life.”
As an opinion journalist who is also a Christian, I believe my primary responsibility is to provide a myriad of perspectives that challenge or — when necessary — correct readers’ opinions, all in the hope that through reading Sojourners’ opinion section they might realize that Christ is inviting them to make the world a more just place.
For several years, I pastored a small church in the Northwest Bronx. In the summer of 2022, the church leadership decided to dedicate one Sunday a month to do a service project where we engaged in direct political action. It was the summer when Roe v. Wade was overturned, and we focused our attention on reproductive justice. Instead of simply looking at reproductive justice as a pregnant person’s right to receive an abortion, we started thinking of it in broader terms: a better family welfare system in the U.S., honoring the bodily autonomy of birthing people, and taking steps toward improving the material conditions of Black and brown children in the Bronx through mutual aid, collective care, political education, and political solidarity.
The present political and religious environment is both intense and toxic, making any judgements about Israel and Palestine perilous. Anyone who dares speak is immediately subject to interrogation, often followed by indictments of antisemitism, or religious zealotry, or blind ideological bias. It’s hard to articulate a message that cuts beneath entrenched, polarized rhetoric — and even harder to listen. But we must try to speak, for silence is complicit resignation to evil, terror, and calamity.
Horror fiction is one of the first spaces to grapple seriously with concerns of justice. (No, really!)
With that in mind, I present five movies you can watch during spooky season that will not only thrill and chill you, they’ll also spur you to think and act for justice.
I contain multiple identities. On the one hand, I am a Black man whose ancestors were enslaved, then pushed into ghettos, and now exploited through the unjust prison labor system. On the other hand, I am living on the stolen land of the Duwamish people. I can’t escape the colonial history of the U.S. and its reverberating effects.
There are times when I try to convince myself that, because I am a Black person living in the U.S., it’s not my responsibility to wrestle with the legacy of colonialism and how I might be a beneficiary of that history. However, after my conversation with author and activist Patty Krawec, I am convinced that I need to view myself through a more complicated lens.
In August 2022, Mennonite minister Rev. Michael Gulker brought together 12 pastors of different denominations from Grand Rapids, Mich., with a unique proposal — to spend a year together exploring their differences with the hope of finding a way beyond them.
Last week, as I attended the fourth Lausanne Congress in Incheon, South Korea, I was struck with how much the global evangelical movement has evolved in the past half century, including the advent of new technologies and the explosive growth of Christianity in the Global South, which has reversed the mission field and shifted the epicenter of Christianity increasingly to Africa, Asia, and Latin America. I was also reminded how much global evangelicalism remains stymied by old debates, including overly narrow conceptions of evangelism. The reputation and witness of the church itself plays a major role in evangelism. Doing justice is integral to the cause of evangelization — a conviction and commitment I wish Christians and churches in the U.S. and around the world more strongly embraced.
When my friend introduced me to pop artist Chappell Roan this past April, I had no idea who she was. Now, nearly six months later, I hear about Chappell Roan (the stage name for Kayleigh Rose Amstutz) daily. From drawing massive crowds at Lollapalooza to having one of the most streamed albums of the summer, Roan’s quick rise to fame has been impressive.
My friend described Roan as the “situationship singer.” A “situationship” a term coined by Generation Z, is a noncommittal or undefined romantic or sexual relationship. “Casual,” the fifth track on Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, grieves a situationship. In it, Roan describes a relationship that fails to evolve into something beyond a pattern of casual, sexual encounters. There’s a confession in Roan’s bridge that’s so honest and unexpected, that it took me by surprise upon first listen. She says, “I try to be the chill girl that / Holds her tongue and gives you space / I try to be the chill girl but / Honestly, I’m not.”
For those who grew up in the conservative Christian world as Roan did, lamenting casual sex is familiar territory. But Roan and other Gen Zers aren’t lamenting casual sex, hookup culture, or situationships because they believe their “sexual purity” is tied to their salvation. Rather, they seem to be lamenting a sex-positive culture that doesn’t live up to the hype.
As a missiologist and practical theologian, I can’t help but appreciate the multiple depictions of an embodied faith throughout the drama, in patterns of both faithfulness and dysfunction.