Thank God for the internet.
If you believe in God, that is. For a time, Mike McHargue did, and then he didn’t, and now he does again.
But it’s on the internet where McHargue — better known as “Science Mike” to listeners of “The Liturgists” and “ Ask Science Mike” podcasts — found community when he was questioning his Southern Baptist upbringing and then the atheism he had adopted. And it’s on the internet where he’s forged a community with others like him who can’t comfortably wear either label: Christian or atheist.
When we center healing, we remember that our struggles for social justice are not just about opposing things we do not like, but building the world we would actually like to live in. So many people do not join the hard work of organizing because they see only what they might lose and not what they would gain in world without oppression. That’s why the process is as important as our goal of social justice. Instead of waiting for the infinitely deferred “revolution,” we can start living the revolution now so people can have a taste of what a better world can be.
On Sept. 19, the police department of Tulsa, Okla., released dashcam footage of a white officer fatally shooting a 40-year-old unarmed black man. Terence Crutcher was shot and killed by Officer Betty Shelby after his SUV stalled on a street. A stun gun was also used on Crutcher by Officer Tyler Turnbough.
Outside of his role in our family, my grandfather played three roles in life that were dear to him: die-hard Mets fan, deacon in his church, never-miss-an-election voter. He was so unbelievably clear in his intention about voting, and perfectly committed to voting. He made that connection between faith and action.
And in his way, he lived out something I think about all the time: how to make our presence in the world powerful enough to change it.
It is heartening to see that hope on display as the vision of a world where all flourish and human agency is honored and sustained. The vision on the website for Black Lives Matter is their Jeremiah’s “purchase ancestral lands.” It is Standing Rock’s protest. It is Breakfast and Book clubs springing up around the country. It is Freedom Schools. It is testament to the sentiment, “It will not always be thus.”
A man who wounded eight people in a knife attack at a mall in central Minnesota before he was shot dead by an off-duty police officer is a “soldier of theIslamic State,” the militant group’s news agency said.
The man, who was wearing a private security uniform, made references to Allah and asked at least one person if they were Muslim before he assaulted them at the Crossroads Center mall in St. Cloud on Sept. 17, the city’s Police Chief William Blair Anderson told reporters.
Reuters was not immediately able to verify the authenticity of the claim made byIslamic State through the group’s affiliated Amaq news agency.
It’s being called “the largest, most diverse tribal action in at least a century”: hundreds of Native American tribes camped among the hills along the Cannonball River.
They’ve gathered in tents and teepees, and in prayer and protest, to oppose the construction of an oil pipeline, engaged in what both activists and religious leaders are calling a spiritual battle.
And they won a partial victory on Sept. 9, when the federal government ordered a provisional halt on construction near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.
What’s behind the opposition to the pipeline, and what makes it spiritual?
Pope Francis told a group of recently appointed bishops that the world “is tired of charming liars” and that they should embody mercy in their dioceses and not be whiners who promote their own “vain crusades.”
The pontiff also told them to be wary of seminarians “who take refuge in rigidity” of practices. “There’s always something ugly behind it,” he said.
Francis made his remarks Sept. 16 in a speech to newly appointed bishops who have been taking part in an annual Vatican orientation course on their new job.
“This is the first I know of an evangelical seminary with a free-standing requirement for graduation to participate in this kind of discrete training. There are other seminaries where sexual boundary, sexual abuse issues are part of another course or class. But it would not be a free-standing event, as Dallas is doing.”
Four weeks ago many of us celebrated the news that the Department of Justice plans to end its use of for-profit prisons. But we then had to wrestle with the fact that this means nothing for migrant detention, which is the largest supplier of prison contracts for GEO and CCA — the top two corporations behind for-profit detention of immigrants of all ages: from babies to the elderly.