coronavirus

5-05-2020

Marie Dennis, senior advisor and former co-president of Pax Christi International, and Rev. Jim Wallis analyze the importance of government social programs to provide true security to our nation.

Christina Colón 5-05-2020

Silhouettes of mobile users are seen next to a screen projection of Youtube logo in this picture illustration taken March 28, 2018. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

In the 18 hours after President Trump publicly mused at a news conference about treating the coronavirus by injecting disinfectants such as bleach and Lysol, 30 calls were made to New York City’s poison control about toxic exposure to household cleaners.

J. Dana Trent 5-05-2020

Photo by Matt Hoffman on Unsplash

COVID-19 amplifies a tenuous holiday, especially among people of faith.

Jim Simpson 5-05-2020

Women prepare meals to hand out to children at the nonprofit YWCA in San Fernando, near Los Angeles. April 28, 2020. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the dark and disturbing injustices and inequities that have always existed in our health care, economy, and government. Though the virus may not discriminate, our humanmade systems and structures do. And in the United States this means that those who are feeling the impact of this disease most acutely are those who have been historically, structurally, systemically, and politically marginalized and oppressed.

5-01-2020

Rev. Dr. Cynthia Hale, the founder and senior pastor of the Ray of Hope Christian Church, talks with Rev. Jim Wallis about the need to observe the sabbath during this time of the COVID-19 crisis.  

Mitchell Atencio 4-30-2020

Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash

The threat to churches across the country, especially churches in low-income areas, caused Justin Giboney, President of the AND Campaign, to start the Churches Helping Churches Challenge. The goal: raise $500,000 in the month of April from financially secure churches, and distribute one-time grants to small churches with financial hardship.

Jim Wallis 4-30-2020

A sign indicating proper social distancing measures is displayed in the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C., April 23, 2020. REUTERS/Tom Brenner

In the midst of this COVID-19 pandemic, we are seeing more than ever who is most vulnerable to contracting and dying of this new disease — and it’s a function of often very old and deeply embedded societal structures that create and perpetuate grotesque racial and economic inequity. 

4-28-2020

Peggy Flanagan, Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota, talks with Rev. Jim Wallis about state and federal responses to the coronavirus.

4-24-2020

How the coronavirus pandemic has further revealed the structural and racial inequalities embedded in our nation.

Jason Ashe 4-24-2020

Health care workers load a person into an ambulance outside of the Elmhurst Hospital center in Queens, New York. April 5, 2020. REUTERS / Eduardo Munoz

Our faith in God is tied to experiences of health and sickness. 

Kaitlin Curtice 4-24-2020

Board Certified Chaplain Bill Simpson comforts a patient under investigation for coronavirus at SSM Health St. Anthony Hospital in Shawnee, Okla., April 23, 2020. REUTERS/Nick Oxford

In this global COVID-19 pandemic, we are reeling from individual and collective grief. We are trying to figure out what life looks like on the other side, hoping for something “normal” but unsure of what that even means.

Jim Wallis 4-23-2020

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Nobody wants our society, economy, government, schools, or our families to stay on lockdown. Everybody wants our lives to re-open. But in order to do that in a way that protects health and lives, three biblical principles are necessary: truth, unity, and solidarity.

Russell L. Meek 4-23-2020

Photo by Chris Briggs on Unsplash

Dr. Oz, Dan Patrick, and a smattering of evangelical pastors utilize rhetoric that pits the long-term economic health of the United States against the short-term health of the actual, flesh-and-blood people living in the U.S. right now. Such rhetoric is dangerous to people’s immediate health, but it also puts in sharp relief a simmering debate among evangelicals: What does it mean to love one’s neighbor?

Robert P. Jones 4-22-2020

President Donald Trump arrives during the daily coronavirus task force briefing at the White House in Washington, April 18, 2020. REUTERS/Al Drago

It’s easy to think a wave of post-virus racial violence like this couldn’t occur today. We’re not coming out of a major world war. And the modern civil rights movement, which traces its roots to actions of resistance during Red Summer, has secured more equal rights and protections for racial minorities. But we are facing official unemployment levels of nearly 20 percent, levels not seen since the Great Depression. Our civic ties have been fraying over the last few decades. And President Trump’s victory in the 2016 campaign laid bare the reality that our greatest divisions are marked not by policy disagreements but by the deeper fault lines of partisan, racial, and religious identity. Even before the pandemic, white supremacy and racial resentment resurfaced as visible features of our culture, religions, and politics.

Portrait of Thomas Robert Malthus by John Linnell. 1834. 

Love him or hate him, Malthus is one of those figures who doesn’t go away.

4-21-2020

How do we feed kids who are missing nearly 34 million meals each day now that schools are shuttered because of the coronavirus? 

A woman sells fried chicken at her open stall along a street, amid the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Nairobi, Kenya April 19, 2020. REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya/File Photo

The number of people facing acute food insecurity could nearly double this year to 265 million due to the economic fallout of COVID-19, the United Nations' World Food Programme (WFP) said on Tuesday.

Trump’s daily press briefings resemble the kind of public idolatry that ancient Caesars engaged in.

A screenshot shows choir Sola rehearsing online using a Zoom platform in Riga, Latvia April 14, 2020. REUTERS/Janis Laizans

Churches across the country are learning that loving one another and our neighbors — while physically distancing ourselves from them — is possible.

Jack Kelly 4-20-2020

Image via REUTERS/Carlos Barria

Antoniette Holt, director of the Office of Minority Health for the Indiana Department of Health, pointed to lack of reliable transportation as a challenge faced by some in African-American communities across the country, making it difficult for people to be on time for doctor’s appointments, often unforgiving when it comes to tardiness. This point is especially important during the pandemic, as social distancing practices are nearly impossible to maintain on public transit.