Frederick Buechner The world’s terrible fragility Much of the rest of the day I lay there on my back watching the endless TV replays of the unspeakably beautiful September morning with the plane, golden in the…
Parker Palmer An ancient fear of “the other” Human nature includes an ancient fear of “the other.” In the face of diversity, we feel tension - and that, in turn, can lead to discomfort, distrust, conflict, violence, and…
Leigh Finke How Do I Learn The Language? Non-LGBTQ+ people may get anxious hearing - let alone being expected to use - language they don’t understand or simply aren’t used to. At this point, you might be flipping…
Kerry Connelly The Birth of the White Empire Most of us - especially those of us who like to think of ourselves as good - sort of cringe at the idea of a white empire. It reeks of…
Maya Angelou Morocco Although I was living in the twentieth century, I still held on to the nineteenth-century fanciful idea of Arabia. There were Caliphs and strong sexless eunuchs and harems where…
Brian McLaren For them, the conceptual side of faith simply isn’t that important Some people don’t think much about their faith. For them, it’s primarily a matter of belonging (I enjoy being part of a church, synagogue, mosque, temple, or dharma group) or…
Susan K. Smith Both the church and the state, when it came to racism, were weak from the start. As slavery continued to thrive in the United States, slave traders, many of whom called themselves Christian, participated in the business of selling human beings. As the economy of the…
Catherine Meeks Opposing racism needs to be rooted in the vision of God’s dream The Christian faith is based upon being committed to God’s dream for us personally and communally. Our living creatively into the future involves our devotion to the compelling vision of…
Ibram X. Kendi The cycle hardened the racist ideas inside me Like the famous question about the chicken and the egg, the answer is less important than the cycle it describes. Racist ideas make people of color think less of themselves,…
Robert P. Jones Underneath the glossy, self-congratulatory histories This book puts forward a simple proposition: it is time - indeed, well beyond time - for white Christians in the United States to reckon with the racism of our…
Lenny Duncan The roots of black Lutheranism in America Jehu would eventually be sent to Philadelphia to be a missionary to the black community there. He founded St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Center City Philadelphia. He bought the land…
Leigh Finke A choice? Some people remain convinced that being queer is a choice, an anomaly, a problem to be solved. But nothing could be further from the truth. Some people argue that queerness…
Kerry Connelly America is good Americans are good. In his July 2019 newsletter to his followers, evangelical leader James Dobson described a visit to the southern border of the United States during what can only…
Leigh Finke What About Biology? You’ve probably heard all of the arguments: There are two biological genders, two sexes for the purpose of reproduction. You’re either XX or XY - there aren’t any other options.…
Kerry Connelly Implied hierarchy Let’s take the binary of white/nonwhite - you know, as a totally random example. Whether you’re ready to admit it yet or not, there’s a hierarchy built in there. Everything…
Maya Angelou To Tell the Truth My mother, Vivian Baxter, warned me often not to believe that people really want the truth when they ask, “How are you?” She said that question was asked around…
Uncategorized This secessionist religion not only survived but also thrived After decades of regional tensions at the Triennial Conventions, where Baptists gathered to coordinate their church and missions work in the early eighteen hundreds, Baptists in the South brought the…
Barbara Brown Taylor There is a place where human knowing runs out “We know,” Nicodemus says to Jesus when he first comes into the room. “You do not know,” Jesus says to Nicodemus right before he leaves. If you interpret this as…
Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons Un-Christlike Conservativism I’ve traveled around the country working at the intersection of progressive politics and religion for the past decade and met countless activists bogged down by un-Christlike conservativism prevailing in our…
Frederick Buechner A Crazy, Holy Grace A crazy, holy grace I have called it. Crazy because whoever could have predicted it? Who can ever foresee the crazy how and when and where of a grace that…
Frederick Buechner With Great Laughter by Frederick Buechner Part of the farce was that for the first time in my life that year in New York, I started going to church regularly, and what was…
