Two weeks before I got married, I lost my job delivering pizzas because I had gotten three tickets for minor traffic violations over the previous two years. So when we got back from our honeymoon, I landed a job working…
Can you really be ‘evangelical’ if you don’t bring good news to the poor?
American evangelicals must be reminded that they are to bear good news and be good news. Numerous American Christians don’t care for the politicized label “evangelical” even though they are, in fact, evangelists. Many such non-evangelicals are more evangelistic than…
Let’s move beyond the easy answers and MLK quotes today
I was in third grade in 1983 when Ronald Reagan, after much hesitancy, signed an act designating the third Monday of each year as a federal holiday honoring the life and contributions of Martin Luther King Jr. I was in…
I saw two Americas this Thanksgiving
On this Thanksgiving weekend just past, I was aware of two Americas. Interspersed among the segments of Macy’s parade and the Disney Holiday celebration was a reminder that in our country not all the pleasures of life are simple or…
Diaper need: The silent crisis intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic
Before the pandemic, 1 in 3 families across the U.S. struggled to afford diapers. Now, with more than 56 million families with children losing their household income since March of this year, diaper banks trying desperately to assuage escalating demands…
William Barber: 100 million eligible voters did not participate in the 2016 general election
Churches must help rally marginalized voters to reverse America’s political and moral decline, activist Bishop William J. Barber II said during the Alliance of Baptists’ online fall gathering Oct. 10. “Galvanizing poor and low-income voters isn’t an act of charity,…
If government causes poverty, shouldn’t government address poverty?
There are those whose Christian conviction somehow excludes the government from any involvement in addressing poverty. That responsibility, they say, rests only with the church. There is great error in this position. If only because governmental policies often cause poverty,…
Q&A with Walter Brueggemann: faith in a time of COVID-19
“Right now, too many churches have flown off into spiritualizing generalizations that are unhelpful to everyone.”
COVID-19 may be novel, but there’s nothing new about the virus of poverty | #intimeslikethese
Maybe this unwanted virus could serve as an invisible stranger, confronting us at the riverside of our own generosity (that should not be necessary), begging us to ask the obvious question: Why are so many children so poor to begin with?