Come Walk with Us—the Journey is Long: An Interview with C. Melissa Snarr
When thinking about religious communities and progressive social justice work, many of us assume an oppositional relationship—perhaps we think of the church groups and activist organizations who protest gay pride parades or canvass neighborhoods to repeal Obamacare, or conversely, perhaps we think of activist organizations who blame Christianity for limitations on women’s reproductive... Read More
O for a Thousand Tongues to Mutter
For a fallen soldier Today, two gray ministers meet a body, go before it, sing or say some pale business about our utterly solitary passage in and out of life, during which we may resolutely bless the Lord and, after a while, simply resurrect. Today, well-meaning ministers speak some truth to a hollow congregation sick of death. In a plain chapel with no more kneeling room, the... Read More
Overcoming Lamech: Lament as Antidote to Violence
“I wanted then, as I do now, revenge for what happened. Bring me the head of Osama bin Laden” wrote Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen two years ago. Cohen was in lower Manhattan on 9/11 and isn’t shy about acknowledging his desire for revenge. At the root of his foreign policy, he declares (with complete seriousness), is his desire to grab bin Laden “by the throat... Read More
Hate Invasion
Like swoops of dark birds settling, anxieties and doubts weigh the branches, folding huge wings as they land. Heavy, broody, and fidgeting, they’ve moved in, building their awkward nests like clots in the trees, black twigs jutting. Clouds will pass, but the mass of sooty bodies walls off the sky, the stars, any heavenly light. A clatter rises, intensifies, dense as rifle fire... Read More
Not For Sale: An Interview with Kevin Austin
Kevin Austin is an important voice in the international effort to end modern-day slavery. As director of the abolitionist faith community within Not For Sale and an ordained missionary with the Free Methodist Church, Austin travels the world to create tools that engage business, government, and grassroots organizations in the service of enslaved and vulnerable communities. In this... Read More
Open Your Eyes Wide: The Generous Vision of Marilynne Robinson
Marilynne Robinson. When I Was a Child I Read Books. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2012. In Marilynne Robinson’s novel Gilead, the Reverend John Ames observes that “you never do know the actual nature even of your own experience”—much less that of others.1 In her new essay collection, When I Was a Child I Read Books, Robinson applies the idea with rigor. There... Read More
Bleakness and Richness: Christopher Nolan on Human Nature
Editor’s Note: This essay contains discussion of plot details, including potential spoilers, from several Christopher Nolan films. I remember the frenetic buzzing in my head on the way out of the midnight showing of The Dark Knight. I remember the way the theater seemed to heave after the final frame, all at once ringing with cheers, expletives, arguments, and the laughter... Read More
Sequence
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. By craft I led the black otter onto land, then calmed it with a drug and other sorcery. Another raised the knife and dressed the flesh. Roasted, it was bitter like a stone or a scroll, and it could not... Read More
Dis-Integration as a Model for Identifying Systemic Evil
While most people idly converse about evil in the broad terms required for superheroes and populist understandings of international relations, terms that envision evil as locked in a battle against good, few attend to the implications of viewing good and evil in Manichaean terms. Beyond assuming that the good is so simple as to have one static definition, such talk also requires... Read More
Relocating the Body of Christ: Parish Collective and the Twenty-First Century Church
In the tenth chapter of the epistle to the Hebrews, the writer admonishes the church, saying, “And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching” (Heb. 10:24-25, NRSV). Simply meeting together, the author writes, is integral... Read More
Recent Comments