Robert D. Cornwall reviews "A Gift Grows in the Ghetto: Reimagining the Spiritual Lives of Black Men" by Jay-Paul Michael Hinds. This book reimagines the ghetto, a place of separation and abandonment, in terms of the wilderness that Ishmael experienced after Abraham expelled him and
Religious leaders reacted swiftly — with legislative appeals and collective grief — to the release of video footage of police officers beating Tyre Nichols, a Black man who died days after a traffic stop in Memphis, Tennessee. Some questioned whether the video of the police
This issue of A Public Witness explores three examples of impactful denominational resolutions to show why it matters when Christians decide to speak with one voice. The model resolutions include two statements decrying the historic mistreatment of Indigenous peoples and a resolution about the war
Robert D. Cornwall reviews "Decolonizing Christianity: Becoming Badass Believers" by Miguel A. De La Torre. This book is a strongly worded prophetic statement calling for Christians of color to decolonize their minds, that is, set themselves free from the message drummed into them by white
Robert D. Cornwall reviews "Becoming Human: The Holy Spirit and the Rhetoric of Race" by Luke A. Powery. This book draws upon theology, especially the theology of the Holy Spirit, to provide a theological foundation for responding to the racialization present in society.
The conversation about Advent imagery of dark and light — and how readily it can be associated with skin color — is one many Christians are having years into a racial reckoning for both the church and the country, sparked by the murders of George
The Hamilton-Garrett Center for Music and Arts in the Roxbury neighborhood in Boston has been for the past year a recipient of funds through a Negro Spiritual Royalties Project of the nearby United Parish in Brookline. It is one of at least a dozen churches
The Native American International Caucus, which advocates for Native Americans both inside and outside of the UMC, is calling on lawmakers to get rid of Columbus Day. To replace the federal holiday, which this year falls on Oct. 10, the caucus is asking Congress to
When it comes to memorializing the nation’s Civil War legacy, Americans are nearly evenly divided over whether to preserve Confederate symbols, memorials, and statues, according to a new Public Religion Research Institute survey. The country’s divisions over the legacy of the Confederacy are bigger than
In this edition of A Public Witness, we take a look at Samford University’s past and find that its current justifications for excluding other Christians from campus rest on a revisionist whitewashing of its own history. After naming Samford’s struggle to face the ghosts in