Anthea Butler writes that when White evangelicals ignore race as the motivating issue, she doubts their witness. Their handwringing, the self-abnegation, is meant to assuage their own discomfort, rather than the discomfort, violence, and continual distress of Black people in America.
On Nov. 25, vandals attacked Mount Vernon Missionary Baptist Church, a historic Black Baptist church in rural Callaway County, Missouri. On Dec. 6, Word&Way Editor Brian Kaylor met Mount Vernon’s pastor, Gordon Coleman, at the church to talk about its legacy and the damage.
A look at history, though, reveals that the forces of Trumpism—with its racism and sexism—run deep through white American Christianity. Read full piece
Vestiges of racism and oppression, from bricked-over segregated entrances to the forgotten sites of racial violence, still permeate much of America’s built environment. Read full piece
Protesters who have toppled Junipero Serra statues face charges for the first time. While Serra, an 18th-century Franciscan priest and Catholic saint, is credited with spreading the Catholic faith in what is now California, critics say he was part of an imperial conquest that enslaved
The namesake of one the U.S. Supreme Court’s most infamous decisions could get a new cemetery marker next year in St. Louis, Missouri. While Dred Scott’s name remains well known today, his gravestone is often hard to find. The Dred Scott Heritage Foundation wants to
A recent dig may have uncovered where the founders of Georgetown University once held those they enslaved in eastern Maryland. Read full piece
On Nov. 10, 1898, two days after a contentious election, armed white supremacists stormed Wilmington. The mobs massacred dozens of African Americans — the true number will never be known — dumping their limp bodies in the winding Cape Fear River. More than 120 years
Pastors and community leaders in Charleston, South Carolina, and Mobile and Montgomery, Alabama, have worked on the “Deep South Joint Statement on the Gospel, Racial Reconciliation, and Justice” aimed at spurring Bible-based racial reconciliation, multiracial conciliation, and racial justice.
A limited but troubling historical analogy. Read full piece