If United Methodists are to fulfill the church’s current mission to dismantle racism, then its white members must come to terms with the denomination’s racist history, contends author John Elford. Elford’s conviction spurred him to write Our Hearts Were Strangely…
This Supreme Court’s dangerous vision of ‘history and tradition’
To kick things off today, just a quick reaction to last Wednesday’s Jan. 6 House committee hearings, which featured Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. Her testimony contained startling new revelations, even in…
America is addicted to white supremacy
This country is addicted to its belief in and adherence to white supremacy. It is an addiction that displays as do all addictions: The desire for the power of white supremacy is part of the political circulatory system of this…
Trayvon and Ahmaud: If schools can’t tell their stories, churches must
“I recall a Sunday morning in the spring of 1968 when the pastor of the Southern Baptist Convention-related church in Mesquite, Texas, where I was youth minister, offered his sermonic response to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. It…
Attacks on Critical Race Theory are ‘attempt to maintain the status quo’
Critical Race Theory, the continued racial segregation of U.S. churches and the need to include African Americans more fully in religious liberty campaigns were among the topics discussed during “Religious Liberty Has Been White Too Long: Voices of Black Scholars,”…
This Good Friday, I’ll be at the hanging tree
We cannot on Good Friday disconnect the crucified Jesus from what Ignacio Ellacuria, Salvadoran martyr, called “the crucified peoples of history.” American Christians must place the Cross alongside the lynching tree, as James Cone makes unforgettably clear in his last…
To heal racism, seek atonement before reconciliation, authors say
White Christians must seek atonement before reconciliation if the wounds of racism are to be healed, two religion scholars said during a March 16 webinar on evangelicalism and race in America. “You can’t have change until you have had true…
Reports of the death of white Christian America are greatly exaggerated
In the beginning of his 2016 book titled The End of White Christian America, Robert P. Jones issued an obituary for white Christian America. The time of death was listed as “in the latter part of the first decade of…
‘We are Cain’: Owning up to the reality of racism in America
Inside both the National Memorial for Peace and Justice visitor center and the Legacy Museum in downtown Montgomery, there is an installation composed of rows and rows of glass jars on wooden racks, containing soil samples from lynching sites. These…