In early July, I called the Rev. Dr. Darryl Aaron, pastor of Providence Baptist Church in Greensboro, N.C. It was the latest moment in our country’s crisis of racism and violence, as we mourned Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. My…
When crisis prompts the question: ‘Lord, teach us how to pray’
Jesus tells us that one important way to pray is to pray through our action, working to ensure that the kingdom of God becomes a reality on earth. He says our way forward is to work to make this world better for others.
The parable of the black life
In his 2015 book Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates writes to his son, “In America it is tradition to destroy the black body. It is heritage.” Ever since I read, re-read and re-read again those words, I have…
Dear non-racist white people: stop saying we’re not racist
In so many ways, we are still experiencing the beginning birth pains of an integrated America. In some ways, we’ve made significant and hopefully irreversible progress. In other ways, it might as well be the first day of integration or the mad years of Jim Crow.
No more Samaritanizing
When we Samaritanize others we imply that they are fatally flawed by identities like their race or religion, their ethnicity or their uniforms, and thus are unworthy of care, understanding or perhaps even life itself.