black lives matter
Tom Lin. Image via InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / RNS
Tom Lin, 43, a Chicago native, Harvard grad, one-time missionary to Mongolia, was recently named the first nonwhite president of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, the national ministry to 40,200 university students, based in Madison, Wis.
Most recently, he served as head of Urbana 15, the missions conference that occurs once every three years.
Image via Mr Doomits / Shutterstock.com
A Baltimore judge found Officer Edward Nero not guilty on all four of the charges he faced in connection with the death of Freddie Gray, reports ABC News.
Screenshot via The White House / Youtube.com
President Obama delivered a commencement address on May 7 at Howard University, one of the nation’s premier historically black colleges.
In his speech, sprinkling jokes throughout, Obama encouraged the graduates to be proud of their achievement and hopeful about their future, but he also offered them some of his wisdom about how to change the world.
Photo via Stephen Melkisethian / Flickr
A new study from Barna paints a bleak picture of racial tension in the United States.
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A task force appointed by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has unleashed a blistering account of racism in the Windy City’s police department, reports The New York Times. The report was issued April 13, just as the police department’s new superintendent was being installed.
As a black person who has lived and worked in struggling cities like these for most of my adult life, I know that the stakes are high in Baltimore. As a black mom, I will have to teach my child what to do if stopped by the police, even though I have no fear that she will ever commit a crime. As the wife of a black man, I wonder if he will be hassled by the police for shoveling our driveway. As a parent who chose to move to the city to give our child the opportunity to have peers who look like her, I know that I am blessed with choices and resources. For those who lack choices and resources, effective leadership is even more crucial.
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The story of Jesus’ passion and death has stirred my imagination since I was a child. In an act of profound mystery, Jesus walks towards the conflict swirling around him. Jesus accepts his arrest and does not raise his voice. His willingness to embrace the consequences of truth-telling leaves him silent in the face of his accusers. His judges repeatedly say they can find no fault in this man, but the people want more. They want someone to blame.
Image via Thames & Hudson / RNS
It is not easy to be a respected member of the art-world intelligentsia and take religion seriously.
“Religion and modern art continue to be typecast as mortal enemies,” writes Aaron Rosen.
Listen to the interview here.
The leader of the Christian social justice group Sojourners says the young black Americans who have been killed by police are victims of deep, structural racial sins that go back to the founding fathers.
Rally & march against police brutality in Newark, N.J., in July. a katz / Shutterstock.com
The Texas Department of Public Safety trooper who arrested Sandra Bland — a 28-year-old black woman who later was found dead in the Waller County jail — has been formally fired, three months after a grand jury indicted him on a perjury charge related to the arrest. For the Class A misdemeanor, Brian Encina faces a $4,000 fine and up to a year in the same jail where Sandra Bland died.
1. Trayvon Martin Was Killed Four Years Ago Today
And here’s what’s happened since. Watch. Share.
2. How a Christian College Turned Against Its Gay Leader
“While Dr. Hawkins and I were scrutinized for different reasons, our stories have this in common: we urged Christians to stand with and for groups that sit at the center of political debates. And we did that as women, one black and one gay. I can only speculate about why Wheaton’s administration has been inconsistent in their treatment of different employees, but one thing is clear: fear makes public perception supremely important.”
Here’s an irony: Standing at the memorial tree and experiencing a cloud of witnesses on this February day during Black History Month did indeed strengthen our resolve to keep fighting through the tears and the pain. We were mindful that on this particular day — Feb. 18, 2016 — the family of Sandra Bland would assemble later in the afternoon at the Houston Courthouse to hear response to their appeal for justice to be meted upon the Waller County sheriff and police. Our cacophony of voices called upon the Holiest of Holies to break the yoke of evil systems in which cronyism and political agendas thrived.
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The hospital that dispatched paramedics to treat Eric Garner, who died after being placed in a police chokehold, has agreed to pay his family $1 million. Video of Garner’s arrest shows an officer putting him in a chokehold as Garner yells, “I can’t breathe!” which became a protest slogan for the Black Lives Matter movement. When emergency responders from Richmond University Medical Center arrived, they did not perform CPR.
Screenshot via Urban Intellectuals/Facebook
“Let’s say they listen to the cops and get in the car,” Anthony Anderson’s character Dre said Feb. 24 on black-ish, referring to his kids, if they were to be arrested.
“Look what happened to Freddie Gray.”
Image via 'Vanguard of the Revolution'/Facebook
The similarities between 1966 and 2016 are frightening. Vanguard of the Revolution serves as a stark reminder that not much has changed in this country for black Americans. But we are here, and we are still fighting, despite knowing the full extent to which the American Empire will go to silence black outrage and destroy black unity. That should make us the vanguards of hope.
1. In the midst of a historically horrible refugee crisis, why didn’t you actively pursue helping the poor, the destitute, and those in desperate need?
Are followers of Jesus supposed to forsake compassion, sacrifice hospitality, and abandon love in favor of a political policy, national security, financial stability, and personal comfort? God is perfectly clear what the mandate is for helping those in need, and yet Christians continue to remain apathetic, passive, and even aggressively hostile toward the notion of aiding such victims.
I don’t know who posted it. But on Feb. 2, as I customarily do, I checked into Facebook to see what my friends were talking about. A post popped up about 86 children slaughtered in Dalori, Nigeria, by Boko Haram, the terrorist group that kidnapped upwards of 300 girls on April 14, 2014. The children, the post dated Jan. 31 noted, were burned alive.
I reflexively shuttered. How was is possible that is was Feb. 2 and I had heard NOTHING of children burned alive, not on any news network?
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Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch filed a civil rights lawsuit against Ferguson, Mo. after the St. Louis suburb rejected an agreement with the Justice Department that would have reformed their criminal justice system. “Their decision leaves us no further choice,” Lynch said.
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I must confess that I am an African-American woman, a Christian woman, a woman who believes there is more than one path to God. Working in the Black Lives Matter movement with people of many faiths, I get a little fidgety when I hear the words “confess that Jesus is Lord and believe that God raised him from the dead.” I think, “Hey, what about my Jewish friend Stef? She is not confessing the Lord-ship of Yeshua/Jesus. What about my friend Hussein? Is he not saved?” I just don’t like it.