Soon Christians worldwide will celebrate the birth of Christ. Presents will be exchanged. Special songs performed. Friends and families will gather. Lights will brighten the gloom of winter. And while Christmas is more cultural than sacred for many, these traditions quietly…
Learn about the kinds of oppression that are different than your oppression, McMickle urges
Black Christians engaged in the struggle for racial justice must not turn a blind eye to the oppression in church and culture of gays and lesbians, women and Latinx, Asian and Native Americans, author and scholar Marvin A. McMickle said…
The Black church and the salvation of the world
“The Black church will be the salvation of the world.” I’ll never forget those words, uttered by a colleague of mine as we gathered for a meeting of the local Black Pastors alliance. They struck me as soon as they…
5 steps to becoming an ally to marginalized communities
In a time when our nation is experiencing a rebellion of oppression, many people of faith are wondering what we can do to become better allies to marginalized communities. It was only recently that LGBTQ people were finally awarded the…
‘Watch with me’: on the other side of our long night of grief, space to reimagine our world
The people who die from COVID-19 will come from every walk of life in every town in the country. But in aggregate, the pattern shows now and will continue to show that deaths by the disease are political deaths – ones set into motion by racism and oppression.
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.
A coffee mug and a heated conversation saved me from my self-righteous view of patriarchy
For thousands of years a lie has been promoted by the powerhouse religions of Judaism, Islam and Christianity, often with the wedding and bedding of religion and state. The lie said, “Patriarchy works for everyone – especially men.” But the truth is patriarchy doesn’t work for everyone – even men.
James Cone and becoming black with God
In his lovely, gentle way, he was professionally pissed off, never fully comprehending how anyone could ever imagine a God who was not an advocate for the oppressed.
A white Jesus can’t save a brown child
I was raised in a brown evangelical church in a small, predominantly white town in central Texas. Our “mother” church was one of the many First Baptist Churches in the Texas Bible Belt. Our congregation was composed mainly of poor, uneducated, largely undocumented migrants from rural Mexico. And while we were a brown church, the Jesus we worshiped was white.