Commentary
Protesters gather at the scene where George Floyd, an unarmed black man, was arrested by police officers before dying in hospital in Minneapolis. May 26, 2020. REUTERS/Eric Miller
We are so troubled.
We are the ones in denial of our violence
and we are the ones who are crying out for justice.
Can you feel us shaking?
Flowers are seen at the site where George Floyd, an unarmed black man, was pinned down by a police officer kneeling on his neck before later dying in hospital in Minneapolis. May 26, 2020. REUTERS/Eric Miller
I can’t breathe.
These were George Floyd’s desperate cries for help as he gasped for breath and clung to life due to the senseless brutality of four police officers in Minneapolis, one of whom, Derek Chauvin, had his knee and weight crushing Floyd’s neck.
Image via Shutterstock/Michael Scott Milner
The COVID-19 pandemic has now laid bare what is still “acceptable” to white America, including many white churches. The unequal suffering of this plague has been verified by the statistics.
When I began my time at Harvard Divinity School, I considered using my degree towards becoming a prison chaplain. But the more I learned about the exploitation of incarcerated people, their families, and their communities, I realized the pursuit of this ministry must be done in a way that does not reinforce the prison-industrial complex.
Anti-Evolution League at the Scopes Trial. Dayton, Tenn. From Literary Digest, July 25, 1925
Symbolically, the Scopes Trial on teaching evolution was a turning point.
B-24 Liberator bombers nearing completion on the assembly line at the Consolidated Aircraft Corporation plant in Fort Worth, Texas. 1942.
What is needed now, as always, is real moral leadership.
Photo courtesy FX's 'Mrs. America' trailer
One of the biggest gleanings from Mrs. America is that women and their motivations for power are complicated and far from monolithic.
Photo by Jake Gard on Unsplash
COVID-19 reveals the artificiality of the urban/rural divide.
Protesters gather outside the warehouse of medical equipment distributor Owens & Minor prior to a visit by Donald Trump in Allentown, Pa, May 14, 2020. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Freedom is about how do we humbly care for one another.
Fragment of the face of a terracotta statue of Apollo Roman beginning of 3rd century BCE. Original image courtesy of Mary Harrsch. Edited by Candace Sanders.
Burton and Dreher share similar aesthetic views about Christianity and the past.
Rev. Jim Wallis talks with theologian and immigrant advocate Karen González about the lessons of immigration in the Bible. The metrics of the COVID-19 pandemic show how disproportionately affected our immigrant and refugee neighbors have been.
At the end of the semester, I snipped an iris at its base, the luminous purple petals reminding me of our history as resilient people in diverse places. During my closing online class, I showed the students a vase of flowers, which my daughter and I had arranged on the wrought-iron table on my deck. Maybe I was subconsciously using perennials that return each year as some obvious metaphor for persistence as they peered at me from their childhood homes in California, Texas, South Carolina, and Maine.
Image via Father's Heart Ministries
Much has been written about the ways in which the pandemic is exposing the fragility of our communities and the underlying vulnerabilities that were ignored. Over the years, Father’s Heart has tried to do what it can to knit the fraying margins of the neighborhood back into the whole, by reminding people of their God-given dignity and worth. But they are working against decades-long policies that have kept so many New Yorkers from accessing affordable housing and better paying jobs.
Image via Pip R. Lagenta/Flickr
Speculative futurism isn’t mentally escaping into a future that is either far more dystopic than our present or far more utopic than we should expect — nihilistically leaning into our sense of dread and doom, or engaging an escapist fantasy that all will be better someday and calling this ungrounded vision “hope” can both be momentarily comforting. A speculative futurist ecclesiology looks at every fault line exposed by this pandemic alongside every gift and grace it illuminates.
A voter fills out a provisional ballot authorisation form for the presidential primary elections at the Franklin County Board of Election office in Columbus, Ohio. April 28, 2020. REUTERS/Paul Vernon
We believe all human beings are made in the “imago dei,” the image and likeness of God — it’s a core tenet of ours and many other faiths. Just as the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed how injustices in our health care and safety net systems stand in stark contrast to that core ideal, so too does any strategy that would negate a people’s votes because of the color of their skin. It is not just a partisan tactic, but rather a denial of their imago dei, a theological, biblical, and spiritual offense to God. Protecting the right to vote affirms the divine imprint and inherent value of all of God’s children.
A man stands next to the memorial for Ahmaud Arbery, at the place where he was shot and killed in Feb. after being chased by two white men in Brunswick, Ga. May 8, 2020. REUTERS/Dustin Chambers
When will the lives of black people ever matter to America? Black people are tired.
The exterior of the Marion Correctional Institution where there have been positive cases of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Marion, Ohio. April 22, 2020. REUTERS/Dane Rhys
Faye Brown was 23 when she went to prison. This week a coroner will report that Brown died at a local hospital of complications from the coronavirus at the age of 67.
Ahmaud Arbery, who was shot and killed in Brunswick, Ga., on Feb. 23, 2020, is seen in an undated photo provided by Marcus Arbery via REUTERS.
What value is there in circulating a depiction of innocent black death?
"I think that the word of God gives us the remedy for a lot when crisis comes. I think that the reality of our theology has to do with the theodicy of God — why does God allow bad things to happen? There’s the communicating, conveying, and teaching about managing crisis; 'How does God view crisis? Is he the author of crisis or is the crisis that we see an experience in our world as a result of something else or someone else?' So really, [ we are] educating our people teaching them the word of God, and using scripture as an example of how to survive, almost any kind of crisis."
President-elect of Bread for the World Rev. Eugene Cho talks with Rev. Jim Wallis about the need for faith leaders to speak out about politics in the time of the coronavirus.