Contributing writer Rodney Kennedy explores what "wokeness" means when applied to the Bible. There are numerous passages that concern what it means to become awake — a matter of being shaken out of apathy, the doldrums, or from being complacent. But who wants to struggle
Liz Cooledge Jenkins unpacks the hypocrisy in voicing support for Iranian women who protest oppressive patriarchy in their context while remaining strangely silent about oppressive patriarchy — and even hostile to those who speak up against it — in our own U.S. context. People in
Rev. Dr. Lee B. Spitzer offers his thoughts on how American followers of Jesus should come to grips with the reality and implications of our country’s historical record of racist actions and structures. He determines that although offering reparations is certainly a societal collective responsibility
Darron LaMonte Edwards writes that while there are many pathways to success through education, most of those pathways for Black and Brown students still have roadblocks and only a select few can tread that path. We are almost in 2023 and it still feels like
Rev. Dr. Michael Woolf argues that while much of the criticism of recent political stunts using immigrants has rightfully focused on the deception and cruelty, Christians ought to take it one step further: these American politicians have not only trafficked vulnerable Venezuelans, they have trafficked
This piece was originally published as the cover story of Word&Way magazine in October 2020, but which has never been published online. Read the piece online in our e-newsletter A Public Witness.
Contributing writer Sarah Blackwell offers her thoughts on how the church's model of the larger group tending to the few in need was swept away during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our pastors were like skippers left on ships trying to throw out as many lifelines as
Contributing writer Rodney Kennedy makes the case that if ever a Bible story reads like our national mythology, it’s Jesus’s story of the rich farmer in Luke 12. In America, we don’t recognize the farmer's actions as greed — we call it a vision, a
Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn discusses why her congregation felt it was time to revisit the practice of having an American flag in the front of their worship space after the insurrection of January 6, 2021. As a pastor, she has become increasingly convinced that we, as
On this anniversary of the September 11 attacks, Christina Ray Stanton reflects on how traumatic reactions can be a normal part of the grieving process and what this means for how we navigate the COVID-19 pandemic. As we approach anniversaries of traumatic events or dates