“Freedom is never really won. You earn it and win it in every generation.” So says Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther King Jr. and director of the King Center in Atlanta. There, the theme of this new year is…
I’ll take the fifth!
The sun is setting on another Fourth of July. The record heat, with its over 100-degree days, continues in dry, parched, sweating, Georgetown, Texas. It has been hotter than …, well, you know! At our house, we enjoyed this holiday,…
Finding inspiration from Fannie Lou Hamer when freedom is under assault
This weekend, I have found strength and solidary in the words of Galatians 5: “Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit.” In this same chapter, we are told that it was for freedom that Christ has set us free. All…
Independence Day: Not to celebrate but to reflect
What do we call the American holiday coming up soon? The Fourth of July? Or Independence Day? A long-time friend answered that question for me in a dialogue we had two years ago. “It’s just the Fourth of July,” she…
600,000 prisoners will be released this year, and we need to do more to prepare them — and us — for their reentry to society
“I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick, and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”— Matthew 25:36 Innumerable dramatizations have made arrest, trial, conviction and prison imaginable to many Americans….
The limits of my right to be unlimited
Some time ago a number of people — I among them — were troubled by a cell phone TV ad that projected the idea that, “I need, no, I have the right to be unlimited.” The disturbing aspect for me…
Enslaved by freedom
He stood up to address the House of Burgesses, the legislative body in Virginia, meeting to determine how to respond to British military intervention in the colony. Relationships between the colonists and the British had deteriorated over the past two…
Understanding Cuba and the United States through July 11 and Jan. 6
In this land where we’re supposed to have a free press, ensuring a range of perspectives on any given topic, I’m finding it hard to see any difference at all between various media outlets in their news coverage on Cuba….
At this conference, religious minorities told each other’s stories of persecution
Imagine the conflicts that could be ended and prevented if the world’s faith leaders got to know one another and began to advocate for those experiencing religious persecution everywhere, said Sam Brownback, the former U.S. ambassador for international religious freedom…