Commentary

Whitney Parnell 10-06-2020
Protesters gather at the White House on July 24, 2020.

Protesters gather at the White House on July 24, 2020. Photo: Allison C Bailey / Shutterstock.com

This executive order is dangerous. Instead of acknowledging that diversity, equity, and inclusion trainings can help work towards the country’s ideals of “liberty and justice for all,” it labels them as reverse racism and sexism.

Miriam Spies 10-05-2020

As churches create plans for re-opening their buildings and look toward a future where people have been vaccinated against COVID-19, there is an opportunity now to re-imagine church. Likely, it will never be the same. And maybe that’s for the better. Singing, hugging, and sharing food have become risky activities. I still grieve this, and yet the possibilities and imagination spurred by these limits excite me.

Greg Jarrell 10-05-2020

President Donald Trump briefly rides by  supporters in the presidential motorcade in front of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where he is being treated for COVID-19 in Bethesda, Md., Oct. 4, 2020. REUTERS/Cheriss May

When news broke last week that the president was diagnosed with COVID-19, I tweeted that the psalm of the morning ought to be Psalm 109, which includes startling lines like "may his days be few" and "may his children be orphans." It was not in jest. While people had varying reactions to the news, the imprecatory psalms give Christians guidance on how to pray.

10-03-2020

Dr. Barbara Williams-Skinner, Co-Convener of the National African American Clergy Network, shares an inspirational message and prayer for Christians to continue fighting for a free, fair, and safe election for all Americans.

10-03-2020

Racism is and must be a central issues for people of faith in this election. Racism denies the image of God in every person and is antithetical to the teachings of Jesus.

10-03-2020

Our racial tragedy breaks God’s heart. Christ’s church must embrace and embody the work of justice and reconciliation to turn the tragic hostility of racism into a pursuit of hospitality.

Jim Simpson 10-01-2020

Makeshift sheets displaying messages of protest contesting the ability to pay for rent hang in the window of an apartment building in the Columbia Heights neighborhood in Washington, D.C., May 18, 2020. REUTERS/Tom Brenner

Despite our immense wealth as a country, poverty has always been a problem in the United States. It remains as an insidious legacy of slavery and systemic racism as well as an ever-present barrier in largely white rural communities and increasingly among Americans living in suburban communities.

Photo by Michael Heuss on Unsplash

We shouldn't be surprised that an election that has come to be about race and culture is also the first in which the sitting president refuses to agree to a peaceful transfer of power. Both of us — a white Christian and a Black Christian, both evangelicals — have both been noticing how differently white people and Black people, even those on the same side of the political aisle, are talking about what we are up against.

Da’Shawn Mosley 9-25-2020

The album is titled The Ascension but, I’ve got to be honest, Sufjan Stevens’ latest masterwork has me feeling the lowest I’ve felt about this country since the start of quarantine.

Jenna Barnett 9-25-2020

Tributes to the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg outside the U.S. Supreme Court. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

It was hard to remain hopeful this week — this year, really. We’re living in an age of dissent.

9-24-2020

Rev. Jim Wallis speaks with Presiding Bishop Michael Curry of the Episcopal Church about God making a way for healing and love from the painful divisions of the coronavirus and white supremacy in our country.

Molly Conway 9-24-2020

Photo by Qihao Wang on Unsplash

There is no guarantee of divine reward for our goodness, nor threat of eternal punishment for our misdeeds. And yet, we are instructed each year, to stop the busyness of our lives, contemplate our own mortality, and make concrete changes based on our conclusions. One might wonder, why bother?

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., June 1, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo

I think one of the biggest impacts of Ginsburg’s life is that her arguments didn’t just change legal frameworks, they also helped change cultural frameworks. In my life, I’ve moved through multiple cultural frameworks where there were remnants of the idea that men were the strong providers and protectors of women, and women were the dependents and nurturing centers of home and family life. The saddest part for me is that some those frameworks resided in my faith communities. The Bible was used to support the idea that men and women were locked into God-ordained, sex-based roles. Those “roles” made me feel I could not, or should not, make use of some of the opportunities I had.

A memorial for Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Ky. Picture taken September 10, 2020. REUTERS/Bryan Woolston

Breonna Taylor’s name didn’t even appear in Wednesday’s indictment against Hankison, which raises alarming questions about what case the attorney general made to defend the value of her life. The decision exposes the value gap in our justice system that so often dismisses and degrades the value of Black life and treats police recklessness and misconduct with impunity. Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron failed to explain why Hankison felt it was necessary to shoot wildly and blindly into the apartment from the parking lot or the details around how this seemingly faulty no-knock warrant was obtained and executed in the first place.

Amy Fallas 9-21-2020

Image courtesy Museum of the Bible, 2016

Edward Said’s profoundly influential 1978 book, Orientalism, describes the term as the West’s portrayal of the East as decadent, static, exotic, and uncivilized. Most importantly, Said’s work emphasizes how these constructions of this exotic ‘other’ are rooted in the West’s need to define itself as different from and superior to the Orient. While his analysis focused on European and American essentializations about Islamic civilization, another implication of orientalism is what these same Western observers thought about their co-religionists in the birthplace of Christianity.

Detained immigrants play soccer behind a barbed wire fence at the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Ga. Picture taken February 20, 2018. REUTERS/Reade Levinson

Forced sterilization of women is a form of abuse and an act of violence against the very image of God in these women in immigration detention. While these accounts are shocking and horrifying, they are unfortunately part of the larger pattern of abuse and neglect present in detention centers that immigrant people and immigration advocates have been denouncing for years.

A pedestrian in Milwaukee, Wisconsin passes a sign urging people to vote. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

When we say the upcoming election is the most consequential election in our lifetime, it is not hyperbole or political spin, but a reflection of  just how stark the choices have become and the perilous nature of the crises that our communities, our nation, and our world faces.

Jim Wallis 9-10-2020

A voter completes his ballot on the day of the primary election in Louisville, Ky., June 23, 2020. REUTERS/Bryan Woolston/File Photo

Racism is a religious issue. Not only that, I would argue that racism is the central religious issue in this election.

Chadwick Boseman. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni

This season of inescapable Black death has been on a traumatizing repeat cycle — from the disproportionate toll of COVID-19 on our community to the senseless and brutal deaths at the hands of police violence — so in that moment my mind and spirit couldn’t process or take another loss, particularly of a Black man who embodied such regal strength and aspirational hope.

A sign is displayed near a bottle of alcohol and flowers left in tribute to the victims of a shooting during Tuesday night's protests, at the site of the incident in Kenosha, Wis.,  Aug. 26, 2020. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

On Sunday, Aug. 23 at Jacob Blake was shot seven times in the back by Kenosha, Wis., police in broad daylight in front of his three sons ages 3, 5, and 8. The bullets damaged Blake’s spinal cord and left him paralyzed. His brutal shooting has not only left his body broken but it has also affected the psyche of his young children — another generation gripped by fear of police.