Violence

Rob Schenck 10-01-2018

It is gut-wrenching to look at their faces — 58 of them. They were young, old, men, women, single, married, parents, and grandparents. From all over the country and from Canada, they had one thing in common: they were fans of country music. One year ago, on Oct. 1, they made their way to an open field in Las Vegas where, in the midst of their revelry, they were plunged into terror and cut down by bullets — more than 1100 — fired from 32 stories above their heads.

Jamar A. Boyd II 8-01-2018

Image via Shutterstock/ Lucas Maverick Greyson 

America’s allegiance is not to black and brown bodies. It is bound to prejudice, racism, militarism, and violence predominantly against people of color. And while Black Lives Matter rose as a voice and movement for black lives, the NAACP’s Youth & College Division amplified its voice, and black Americans across this nation cried out, the American majority kept quiet.

the Web Editors 6-04-2018

A relative mourns during the funeral of Palestinian nurse Razan Al-Najar, who according to health officials and a witness was killed by Israeli forces as she tried to help a wounded protester at theGaza border, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip June 2, 2018. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

Violence in the Gaza Strip has been raging for more than two months, with more than 115 casualties in the "Great March of Return" protests organized by Hamas, a militant group that controls Gaza. Since the end of March, Palestinians have been protesting to shed light on on the Israeli-Egyptian blockade on Gaza, and also call for the “right of return” for Palestinian refugees displaced since the 1948 war.

the Web Editors 3-22-2018

Image via Kevin Cortopassi / Flickr

“It is an atrocity that an unarmed young man was shot at twenty times in his own backyard and shows the urgent need in these times for intervention against police misconduct. We will call for a complete and thorough investigation into this young man’s death," Rev. Al Sharpton said in a statement. 

the Web Editors 3-19-2018

Authorities maintain a cordon near the site of an incident reported as an explosion in southwest Austin, Texas, U.S. March 18, 2018. REUTERS/Tamir Kalifa

"With this tripwire, this changes things," Christopher Combs, special agent in charge of the FBI's San Antonio division, said. "It's more sophisticated, it's not targeted to individuals ... a child could be walking down a sidewalk and hit something."

the Web Editors 3-13-2018

Activists install 7000 shoes on the lawn in front of the U.S. Capitol on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S. March 13, 2018. REUTERS/Eric Thayer

Organized by Avaaz, a U.S.-based civic organization that emphasizes global activism, intends for the "Monument for our Kids" to put pressure on Congress to take action on gun control. Images of the striking visual have been widely shared on social media, with the hashtag #NotOneMore. 

Kelly Germaine 3-08-2018

Spiritual bypassing is not exclusive to Christians or white people, but I would argue we are the most guilty collective of practicing and enforcing it. We maintain systems and cultures that coerce all of us to assimilate into the practice of bypassing pain. In our anger-phobia, we shame oppressed people into the compliance of feigning joy. Worse than that, we tell them and ourselves — either simplicity or explicitly — that justice work is a distraction from the gospel message.

Jessica Brown 3-07-2018

Losing a loved one to murder is unlike any other type of loss. Not only are we robbed of that person and of what could have been, we are robbed of peace, forever haunted by how our loved ones died. There is a level of brutality and fear that comes with homicide. When someone is sick, we can understand the illness and we usually have time to process and say goodbye. But homicide comes with so many questions and finding answers becomes a full-time job.
 

the Web Editors 2-27-2018

An American flag still stands next to one of over 170 toppled Jewish headstones after a weekend vandalism attack on Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery in University City, a suburb of St Louis, Missouri, U.S. February 21, 2017. REUTERS/Tom Gannam

Greenblatt attributed the spike in numbers to President Donald Trump failure to denounce events such as the Charlottesville white supremacist rally and various incidences of bomb threats, cemetery vandalism, and school bullying. 

Gareth Higgins 1-25-2018

Michael Shannon and Sally Hawkins in The Shape of Water/ Kerry Hayes

I HAVE A SIMPLE view of what makes a movie great: Technical craft and aesthetic vision operating at their highest frequencies come together in service of a story or images that help us live better. How does the movie interact with what Mennonite peace theorist and practitioner John Paul Lederach calls the choice to participate in escalating dehumanization or escalating humanization? In other words, does the movie help us become less human or more? In a narrative film, do the characters’ doubts and loves, the pain they suffer, and the results of their actions leave us with a deeper sense of our own humanity?

No aspect of popular culture more urgently deserves our attention than how “enemies” are presented. What motivates “bad guys,” and how are they dealt with by “good guys”? What side is the audience on? It has been noted by some that every audience watching Star Wars wants to believe that it’s the Rebel Alliance, fighting a titanic battle against an Evil Empire. Some viewers may imagine the Empire is North Korea. Others may imagine it is the U.S. Then, of course, there is the Russian dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s clarity: that the line between good and evil runs through every person, not between us.

the Web Editors 1-10-2018

“In the midst of the critical national conversation now taking place on issues of sexual harassment and assault, this survey shows that young Americans in their teens and early twenties see serious negative consequences flowing from traditional depictions of masculinity,” Robert P. Jones, CEO of PRRI, said. “Young women, in particular, are worried that these expectations carry within them the seeds of sexually aggressive or even violent behavior.”

Judge Roy Moore participates in the Mid-Alabama Republican Club's Veterans Day Program in Vestavia Hills, Alabama, U.S., November 11, 2017. REUTERS/Marvin Gentry/File Photo

President Trump and the Republican National Committee, on the other hand, are supporting an accused child molester for the U.S. Senate. It is as if the Catholic bishops were promoting a child abuser for bishop.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson speaks to staff members at the U.S. Mission to the U.N. in Geneva, Switzerland October 26, 2017. REUTERS/Alex Brandon/Pool/File Photo

A confidential State Department “dissent” memo not previously reported said Tillerson breached the Child Soldiers Prevention Act when he decided in June to exclude Iraq, Myanmar, and Afghanistan from a U.S. list of offenders in the use of child soldiers. This was despite the department publicly acknowledging that children were being conscripted in those countries.

Image via Twitter / RNS

The report shows that anti-Semitic incidents spiked during and immediately following the Charlottesville protests that left one woman dead. President Trump ignited a political firestorm in the wake of the violence when he attributed “blame on both sides” — white supremacists, as well as those who marched against them.

Image via JP Keenan/Sojourners. 

You listen to her tell the story — then listen to her tell it again
You want to learn her story by heart so you never forget
what she told that interviewer about the time she was arrested
for protesting — when she was just seventeen.

Image via RNS/Creative Commons/Ashashyou

The 2,000-year-old Coptic Church of Egypt has a long tradition of hallowing those who died affirming their faith in the face of violence.

But the group that calls itself the Islamic State has launched waves of attacks on the Coptic community in recent years – claiming at least 70 lives and wounding scores of others – an unrelenting assault that has opened a debate in the community about martyrdom.

Kaitlin Curtice 8-14-2017

And our best chance at fighting supremacy on a daily basis is to know who we are, to know the truth of what we are called to be in the name of Jesus — based on his peace, his shalom, his justice, and based on the fact that all people are equally valuable in their own skin and own cultures. This forces us to take a look at our missionary ideologies, at the way we view light and darkness and what we teach from our pulpits and in our bible studies. It forces us to recognize that people who are outside the institutional church are doing the good work of Jesus, too, and we learn from them.

Kaitlin Curtice 7-18-2017

We live in a world full of extremists. It is not just in American society that the battle between extreme beliefs on either end of the spectrum is happening constantly in our political, social, and religious circles. Violence, hate crimes, and acts of oppression erupt all over the world, and through the news and social media, we are witnesses to the distress calls of the people who are caught in the middle of these battles

Image via Rena Schild/ Shutterstock

What we’ve learned three years after Eric Garner’s death is that we can’t give up on God’s mandate for justice, incarnated in the gospel’s good news. If we trust and believe that selfish agendas of special interests will not prevail, we are compelled instead to believe that love will conquer hate.

Abby Olcese 6-27-2017

Image via Baby Driver Facebook page 

The new film Baby Driver is a movie that expresses joy through art, specifically music. The action film from director Edgar Wright connects the joy of listening to a favorite song to the way those musical rhythms color our everyday lives. At its best, the film is a celebration of joy in creativity that bleeds over into a joy in creation itself. It struggles, however, to turn that aesthetic delight into something of substance.