“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…
Baptist advocates for Equality Act say they are motivated by love of freedom as a faith virtue
Advocating for the Equality Act offers a meaningful way to push back against the faith-based white supremacy that oppresses LGBTQ Americans just as it always has done to women, people of color and members of minority religions, a panel of…
In a time of different truth worlds, ‘Bump that, get free’
I write these words from a place of brokenheartedness with the world around me, as political battles rage and shared understanding seems further and further away. I write these words after harrowing (and sometimes heartening) conversations with people I love….
Confronting all who would abuse the sacred idea of liberation in a time of crisis
Liberation is a sacred idea. Those who exploit the crisis of a global pandemic for their own political purposes or personal gain are not liberators.
Check your idols at the church door. Trinket gods aren’t worth much.
Let’s name these false deities security, convenience and control. These are not three separate gods. They are the same idols, simply described in different ways, each highlighting different connotations and pointing in slightly different trajectories.