Commentary

When we do not take care of the earth and allow powerful individuals or companies to plunder the land God has called good (Genesis 1), the people who are disproportionately impacted are the marginalized. This discrepancy between those who benefit and those who suffer highlights the way our society is structured to benefit oppressors at the expense of people who are poor, hungry, and disenfranchised.

Perhaps you have seen the photos: Protesters at school board meetings holding signs that say “Stop Teaching Critical Racist Theory To Our Kids” or “I Am Not An Oppressor.” At the heart of these protests is opposition to teaching children about the United States’ shameful racial history — a history that repeats itself in systems and structures today. Many of these protests appeal to white parents’ fears that reckoning with our nation’s past sins and injustices will make their kids feel ashamed or that — in some twisted logic — this reckoning is itself “racist.” I’ve watched this growing campaign with anguish; I believe that cultivating a greater commitment to anti-racism within the next generation will empower our kids, not instill shame.

Last week, I told my colleagues that I never struggle to write these introductions. As you can predict, that meant this week’s introduction became extremely hard to write — as I deserve. The job of this introduction is to briefly whet your appetite, give you some connecting thread for our recommended stories, and maybe say something profound. I'm learning, however, that not every story needs a moral. 

We've long argued that budgets — including our federal budgets — are moral documents. As Christians, we see this as a principle deeply rooted in scripture, including Luke's gospel, which explains that the two greatest commandments are to love God and love our neighbors (Luke 10:27). In that same passage, Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan, a story about how our love for God and neighbor will be tested when our neighbors need us the most.

I have always been fascinated by heists. Maybe it was a youthful desire to sneak out and trick my parents (a desire that led me to failure every single time). Maybe is was the bravado and beauty of Neal Caffrey (played by Matt Bomer) on White Collar. Whatever it was, it was a fascination I put to rest as I matured to value integrity and simplicity. 

A biopic about Tammy Faye Messner, better known as Tammy Faye Bakker, is ripe for caricature. That face, covered with a rainbow of lipstick, eyeliner, and mascara. That voice, with its exaggerated Upper Midwest accent. Those televangelism broadcasts, where puppet shows and hymns were followed by direct pleas for money from Tammy Faye and her first husband, Jim Bakker. She’s an easy figure to ridicule. But The Eyes of Tammy Faye, a new biopic that shares its name with Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato’s 2000 documentary, blessedly avoids this trap.

My first foray into critical race theory was short-lived. I began by picking up Tommy J. Curry’s essay “Will the Real CRT Please Stand Up?” Three pages in I realized I did not know enough about race scholarship or CRT to appreciate his arguments.

People in the United States have deeply conflicting understandings of our nation’s history: Are we a nation that guarantees “liberty and justice for all”? Or are we a nation that will continue to confine this promise to only certain Americans, falling short of realizing this promise for all? When we explore these questions, we start to see that many injustices that show up today have been with us since the nation’s founding.

What does it mean, now two decades past this traumatic event, to “never forget” 9/11? And why are we simultaneously encouraged to “move on from the past” when it comes to other great American tragedies, like the genocidal erasure of Indigenous peoples, or the horrific violence against Black people from chattel slavery through Jim Crow?