The stakes couldn’t be higher. If churches get this wrong, people will die. People we know and love, people we have never met, folks that count on the church to do the right thing. Yet pressures are mounting to open now.
Justice for George Floyd: what went wrong and how to make it right
From my vantage point as a lawyer, judge and Baptist minister, I have reviewed carefully the matter of George Floyd’s death while in the custody of Minneapolis police officers and the stream of events in the wake of his death. The list of what went wrong is long and damning.
Will we white Christians continue to ignore the pleas of our black brothers and sisters?
We have a systemic problem, one that our African American brothers and sisters have tried to warn us about year after year, decade after decade, only to be ignored.
‘I can’t breathe’: three words that capture the crushing weight of systemic racism in America
Those of us who are white are asked by the cross to stand in solidarity with the crucified class to dismantle the structures of white supremacy that sustains itself through the use, abuse and destruction of black and brown bodies.
‘We can’t breathe’: an apt Pentecost prayer for white Christians
Now more than ever, we need that Breath in our bodies, that fire in our bones, that vision of an otherwise possibility that bespeaks sheer revolution and not a measured tinkering with a supposedly “broken system.”
The time is now: Born-again Christians need to make some babies
The Holy Spirit is conceiving new life and needs a partner. The Church, the body of Christ, is called to be born again and again and again. May we be a body in the infancy of innovative growth, a body vulnerable and yet powerful as the Church enters an unknown future full of new possibilities.
Ahmaud, Breonna, Christian, George, and The Talk every black boy receives
Today I am trying my hardest to find solace in Jesus, another man who cried out to his mother, and to his father, when he was bleeding and suffocating on the lynching tree, being put to death by people who believed they had more power than he.
The First Amendment and religious freedom compel me to refute Trump’s position on churches reopening
I come from people who had to “steal away” to worship God. Slaveowners could not prevent my ancestors from worshiping God and caring for others. No politician in the current version of U.S. slavocracy will do so.
Mr. President, worship is an essential part of my life, but not an essential part of my death
If the church is truly committed to the “care of souls,” then my physical absence on Sundays is not a test of faith, it’s an affirmation of faith and life. If God really is present everywhere, and if churches continue to offer worship online, then so be it. The Spirit knows where to find me, wherever I am.
The Commander-of-Church-in-Chief
President Trump is running scared, and understandably so. His press room appearance to demand the reopening of houses of worship is proof positive. Without the so-called white evangelical vote, he has no chance at reelection.
Black people have the right to defend themselves by the same means their white counterparts do
Here’s the unsettling but important point being made: You cannot just kill black people indiscriminately, wantonly, whimsically and expect that they will – or better yet – that they SHOULD accept it as if their lives do not matter to themselves, their families and their communities.
While some try to politicize wearing face masks, for me it’s a spiritual practice
The face mask debate among Christ followers amid a devastating global pandemic demands that we think deeply about what outward signs signify about inward spiritual grace. I have come to view wearing a protective mask as a spiritual practice.