Does hope mean anything anymore? What is the point of hope in this season? I’ve asked myself those questions, along with many, many others in the preceding months and today. I look at the mess we’ve made of the United…
Four radical implications of knowing you are God’s child
We are children of God. This statement is incredibly simple. And incredibly radical. In Genesis, God creates humanity out of God’s image. Humans are made into God’s image and grow into God’s likeness. We are like God; we bear God’s…
Remembering John Lewis: An invitation to make ‘good trouble’
Rep. John Lewis has bequeathed to the church a call to make “good trouble” and to stir up the gift that resides in us: faith in God and faith in each other. I pray the followers of Jesus are finally…
Black people have the right to defend themselves by the same means their white counterparts do
Here’s the unsettling but important point being made: You cannot just kill black people indiscriminately, wantonly, whimsically and expect that they will – or better yet – that they SHOULD accept it as if their lives do not matter to themselves, their families and their communities.
White politicians and conservative evangelicals are still riding ‘the wrong train’
Bonhoeffer was right. If you board the wrong train, running along the corridor in the opposite direction doesn’t solve your problem. White Christians need to get off the racism, capitalism and militarism train.
COVID-19: Now I understand King’s truth of the ‘inescapable web of mutuality’
Prophets have been saying this for millennia: Justice will not be guaranteed to me until we have built a culture ensuring justice for everyone. My own welfare can only be found in the welfare of my most vulnerable neighbor.
Our national curse: the cruel convergence of Trump’s presidency and the COVID-19 pandemic
Trump’s cruel suspension of U.S. support to the World Health Organization is not only fraudulent; it is a crime against humanity.
The looming prophetic crisis and the urgency for truth-telling
Truth-telling is a moral imperative no matter who may resent hearing the truth, no matter who may refuse to believe the truth and no matter what people who oppose the truth may do to truth-tellers.
We need to talk about oppression, not just privilege
A friend quoted from memory lines from Langston Hughes’ poem, “Mother to Son.” I was reminded that it is the very definition of white privilege to think we can just sit down on the stairs because the work of racial justice is hard.
Brave peacemaking, not bullying, must be our goal
As observances of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday and MLK Day approach, King’s prophetic warnings about war ring relevant and true to our current political environment.
Can Kanye help spark a radical, new Christian Reformation?
The Church needs a reformation from “empty,” mainstream expressions of Christian faith profiting from indulgences of cheap grace, miscarriages of justice and deception paraded as sound devotion remixed over gospel beats.
‘The saints have no extra credits’: Reformations then and now
Luther’s phrase, “The saints have no extra credits,” reminds us that the practice of selling indulgences didn’t end with the Reformation. Consider William Barr’s recent “religious liberty” speech at Notre Dame Law School.