James Talarico, a Democratic state representative in Texas, recently was interviewed on MSNBC and asked by hosts what his views are on the war in Gaza. He responded, “There’s a theologian who said, ‘I screamed at God for the starving…
Trump’s latest bundle of lies endangers trans folk the most
“No transgender for everyone,” Donald Trump declared of his second term as president in a controversial social media post Oct. 27. In an 83-word Truth Social post that boasted at least eight flagrant lies, Trump included as part of his…
A faithful response to the Wounded Knee decision
On Sept. 26, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced that the 20 soldiers who participated in the 1890 massacre of hundreds of Lakota men, women and children at Wounded Knee would retain the Medals of Honor awarded to them….
Don’t shoot the boats!
The U.S. military sank Venezuelan vessels at least six times since early September. A strike on Oct. 14 killed six people. After a strike on Oct. 17, the U.S. took survivors into custody, and the death toll from these attacks…
The American church is comfortable and lazy
One reason there is such a dissonance between the church and the culture in the United States is because the church has gotten lazy. In the early days of my time in Abilene, Texas, at Crescent Heights Baptist Church, Hardin-Simmons…
We need more faith spaces that affirm the LGBTQ communities
Earlier this month, the conservative evangelical “King’s Army” spewed homophobia at Londoners and I was transported back to being a closeted queer teenager. Hearing those same sentiments at a young age was what made me realize my childhood church was not a…
Struggling for words these days
What’s a four-letter word that means feces? Dung. What’s a four-letter word for something many people love to do with a partner multiple times per month? Golf. Thus, if you need to instruct someone to hit a manure ball with…
In Lebanon, sexual abuse and economic abuse go hand in hand
“I don’t know if I’ve started ignoring everything because I got used to the ugliness, or because the smell of cannabis makes it easier not to care.” With these words, Ftoun, 15, a Syrian refugee working in cannabis fields in the plains…
Farewell to a Church Triumphant
The current run of failures in leadership and difficulties applying our disciplinary processes won’t be the death of the Anglican Church in North America. Far from it. I make that prediction as one of a small group of people who…
The Million Man March 30 years later
October 16, 1995, will forever be etched in my heart — not just as a moment in history, but as a defining moment in my own life. I was a 19-year-old senior at Coatesville Area Senior High School, just outside…
MAGA is making America dizzy again
In 2015, a military training exercise called Jade Helm became the basis for a right-wing conspiracy theory which claimed that under President Barack Obama, the federal government planned to impose martial law. Conservatives went crackers over an unfounded prospect that…
Lisbon to Auschwitz to Alligator Alcatraz: Cruelty and the human face of evil
There are few things more characteristic of the Trump regime than cruelty, often gratuitous cruelty. It is the human face of evil in one of its most repellent forms. Susan Nieman, in her masterful work Evil In Modern Thought: An…