American churches are ideally positioned to help replace a broken criminal justice system with one that empowers communities to heal the trauma that fosters violent crime, according to panelists on a Jan. 17 webinar. The online conversation hosted by Equal…
Quakers join the applause for Biden’s federal pardon of simple marijuana possession
The Quakers joined other proponents of criminal justice reform to welcome President Joe Biden’s recent announcement that he will grant pardons to thousands of Americans convicted on federal charges of simple marijuana possession. While many conservative Christian denominations typically support…
2020 vote shows religious identity held steady with slight change among Catholics and Mormons
Religious identity trends appear to have held fairly steady in the 2020 presidential election, based on a combination of exit polling and pre-election surveys. Because of the enormous number of Americans who voted by mail or in advance this year,…
The case of Rodney Reed: A call to abolish state-sanctioned lynching known as capital punishment
We celebrate the 11th-hour decision by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to stay the execution of Rodney Reed. At the same time, Reed’s case highlights the need to abolish capital punishment.
Churches should be more like grand juries – except for the judging part
I spent two weeks on a grand jury listening to stories that make it clear the world needs good churches.
Caring for every child of God means challenging our country’s school-to-prison pipeline
In your community and mine, it is easy to find children who are, for myriad reasons, embroiled in the juvenile justice system. Will we stand idle and silent, allowing beloved children of God to be funneled away from academic success and rerouted toward the juvenile justice system?
Advocates seek systemic change in prison justice issues
For the past 15 years, Alan Bean has found himself involved in some of the biggest criminal justice controversies in Texas and Louisiana. In 1999, the mild-mannered Baptist minister founded Friends of Justice and assumed the role of prophet and…
Six assumptions that allow white evangelicals to flout biblical norms
By Alan Bean In The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement, Steven Teles describes how the conservative movement was able to undermine and largely replace what he calls the Liberal Legal Network (LLN for short). By the late 1960s, liberal…