Religion News Service

Want to understand Black experience? Learn about African American faith, survey finds

from Religion News Service - A significant percentage of Black church attendees — 69% — agree that pastors of Black congregations are the African American community’s most important leaders. https://religionnews.com/2021/02/19/want-to-understand-black-experience-learn-about-african-american-faith-survey-finds/

Religion News Service

The impeachment vote was a vote for white supremacy

by Andre Henry - The refusal to confront the white supremacy at the Capitol is a refusal to reconcile America’s lofty democratic rhetoric with the state of its floundering institutions.…

Religion News Service

‘The Deconstructionists Playbook’ outlines ways forward for questioning Christians

"Our Bible App" launched a Kickstarter campaign earlier this month to raise money to create a devotional book for not only deconstructing faith but also reconstructing and 'liberating' it. https://religionnews.com/2021/02/15/the-deconstructionists-playbook-outlines-ways-forward-for-questioning-christians/

Uncategorized

Yolanda Pierce on grandmother theology, Black Jesus and Mariology

'I'm really trying to shift the discourse about who can do theology and what counts as theological source material,' says the first woman dean of Howard University’s divinity school and…

Robin DiAngelo

We cling tightly to the ideology of individualism when asked to consider our own unearned advantage

Individualism is a story line that creates, communicates, reproduces, and reinforces the concept that each of us is a unique individual and that our group memberships, such as race, class,…

Ausin Channing Brown

Dear Nice White People What are you afraid of?

by Austin Channing Brown https://austinchanning.substack.com/p/dear-nice-white-people?r=43xc6&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&utm_source=copy

Mark Feldmeir

“Give me your tired, your poor”

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my…

Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons

Private schools in the South opened by white parents to avoid desegregated public schools

The Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 was heralded by progressive Christians and many other Americans as a huge advance for social justice, but it…

Ausin Channing Brown

Joy as Resistance

by Austin Channing Brown https://austinchanning.substack.com/p/joy-as-resistance?r=43xc6&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&utm_source=copy

Diana Butler Bass

“Play unplugged my fear”

It turns out that play and gratitude are linked. Mary Beth Sammons, coauthor of The Grateful Life, recalls how she struggled as her father and mother passed away—not quickly—but over…

Brian McLaren

Questioning

Paradigms and dogma can be defended and enforced with guns and prisons, bullets and bonfires, threats and humiliations, fatwas and excommunications. But paradigms and dogma remain profoundly vulnerable with anomalies…

Uncategorized

2021 Black History Month Recommendations for the Whole Family

by Dominique Dubois Gilliard https://christiansforsocialaction.org/resource/2021-black-history-month-recommendations-for-the-whole-family/

Diana Butler Bass

Three Views of Jeep’s Bruce Springsteen Commercial

from Diana Butler Bass: https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/a-better-middle?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&utm_source=copy from Jeffrey Salkin: https://religionnews.com/2021/02/09/super-bowl-jeep/ from Amanda Tyler https://religionnews.com/2021/02/11/dear-jeep-christian-nationalism-cannot-unite-us/

Brandan Robertson

“I really am learning that God doesn’t show partiality to one group over another. “

Another place that this forward movement takes place in Scripture is in the Book of Acts 10. For the sake of time, I’ll summarize the account. The Apostle Peter receives…

Shane Claiborne

A former Confederate state just voted to abolish its death penalty. Here’s why that’s a big deal

by Shane Claiborne https://religionnews.com/2021/02/05/a-former-confederate-state-just-abolished-its-death-penalty-heres-why-thats-a-big-deal/

Robin DiAngelo

These ideologies make it very difficult

We make sense of perceptions and experiences through our particular cultural lens. This lens is neither universal nor objective, and without it, a person could not function in any human…

Susan K. Smith

Breathing Easier but Not Easily

by Susan K. Smith https://candidobservation.com/2021/02/06/breathing-easier-but-not-easily/

Matthew Tennant

Pray for them

One way we grow closer to others is to pray for them. By lifting up another person in prayer, it becomes much more difficult to hate or embrace divisions. Beyond…

brenda salter mcneil

Offering a larger narrative to which people can connect and rebuild their story

The current sociopolitical climate, where untruths are allowed to go unchecked, unchallenged, and unsubstantiated, creates an environment that not only threatens people’s physical safety but also does violence to their…

Religion News Service

National unity isn’t just possible, it’s worth working for

The question is not really whether we can achieve national unity. It is whether we are willing to do the work. https://religionnews.com/2021/02/02/national-unity-isnt-just-possible-its-worth-working-for/

Mark Feldmeir

Homesickness – the longing for home.

Frederick Buechner points out that the word “longing” comes from the same root as the word “long,” in the sense of length and time, as in, “it’s a long line,”…