The more we learn about someone else’s story, the more understanding we gain about their perspectives.
Beyond ‘contact without fellowship’: How can white people move toward black people?
While white people in America will never fully imagine what black people endure, this does not excuse the sin of racial ignorance or the empathy deficit that black pastor and theologian Howard Thurman called “contact without fellowship.”
Baldwin’s ‘The Fire Next Time’ has arrived, and it burns inexorably toward liberation
As people rise up to declare that they will not endure or be complicit in racist, white supremacist oppression, let’s call their actions what they are: protest, freedom struggle and revolution, not rioting, looting or “disobedience” to the authorities.
Blessed are the poor in spirit. Really? Have you not been watching the news?
I preached on the poor in spirit, because when I listened carefully it sounded like God saying we have to do better – as the church, as communities and as a nation.
As the white mother of a black son, calls for racial justice evoke something deep within me
My son is now raising black sons of his own. He fears for them, as I feared for him when he was a child and now fear for my grandchildren.
Trump’s latest obscenity, a contrived and vacuous photo op, has left a lasting impression
Just as Trump has not risen to the stature of the presidency, religious leaders who have blindly supported and defended him have not risen to the stature of their prophetic calling. A country cannot afford to have both king (president, in America’s case) and prophets fail all at once.
We can’t talk about racial justice without addressing the ‘value gap’
What the eruption of protests – and subsequent riots – across the nation shows is that for too long black bodies have been harmed and victimized by the past and present values of white supremacy.
I’m so weary of hearing ‘I’m sorry’ from white people. Just stop it!
White people can be exhausting partly because there is so much that they are ignorant of or unequivocally wrong about on crucial, literally life-and-death issues. And that gets old.
I can’t imagine the longsuffering patience of black people. I hope to understand their impatience.
The protests and demonstrations this time are different. They may be a sign that something really is changing, even with the longsuffering patience of the black community. At least I pray that is so.