Christianity

School Board Member on Why She Got Arrested

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I am a member of the Board of Education for Durham Public Schools, but I did not go to speak to the Legislature as a board member. I went as a Christian, as a product of the public school system of NC, and as a mother. I went to speak on behalf of the children in Durham who I claim as mine – especially the 27% of children who live below the poverty line. It is these vulnerable children – the least of these – who will be hurt the most by the policies being promoted by the majority in this General Assembly. These children are depending on our schools to become educated citizens who can contribute to our state. We must not abandon them.

Christianity

The Church's Second Birthday

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Have you ever had to reinvent yourself? I have. I am sure that many of you have. The phrase has a peculiarly American flavor, as if oneself were the hero of the whole project—designer, director, and finished product. But re-invention is just a phrase; the experience to which it refers has always belonged to the human predicament. Of such is the story of Arjuna—Odysseus—Jacob—Job—Jesus in the wilderness—Jesus before the Cross. Re-invention comes to this.

Christianity

Memorial Day 2013

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On Memorial Day we remember with gratitude those who were willing to fight and to die in the nation’s perpetual war against itself, against our own fears and lies. Yes, the world is full of evil, both within and beyond our national boundaries. Yes, there are human beings who have been indoctrinated to do violence for the sake of this or that god, for this or that religious tradition, for this or that political ideology. The larger question is: what is the best way to overcome evil and the cycle of violence and vengeance?

Christianity

Weekly Sermon: The Word Is Very Near

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Riverside, our crises have arrived. There is the seemingly external crisis of climate change, which many deny; and the crisis internal to the church, namely, to hear together one word why Riverside must exist for a whole world; one word, deeper than all our differences. This word is very near. How will you hear it?

Christianity

Drinking from the Justice Well

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I’m delighted that people are eager to hold Jesus and justice together with their whole lives-especially white evangelicals, to whom this is news. But I’m sure that we who have neglected justice for so long cannot learn to practice it well without listening closely to our sisters and brothers who’ve known Jesus while suffering injustice.
We cannot have a justice movement in 21st century America without learning from the black-led freedom struggles of the 19th and 20th centuries in this country.
This is why School for Conversion has decided to make 21st Century Freedom Rides a central piece of our public education program moving forward. And it’s why I’m devoting two weeks this summer to teaching a seminar on the East and West coast for people who are eager to drink from the wells of wisdom that America’s black-led freedom movement offers.

Christianity

Inherit the Earth: Stay in the City

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Christian community has an urgent role in this history. On the one hand, no church can magically separate itself from the spiritual disease of the wider society. If we could, we would be a cult; we would not be God’s love for a whole world, but against it. Jesus saw this. Stay here in the city, he told his disciples. Here in the church we already have the laboratory set up to help with civilization’s great test.

Christianity

Weekly Sermon: Eyes Open

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Nothing is as beautiful as union and unity of mind. Nothing compares with being one—provided each individual is honored and respected. Each individual! Inside that little word, you can hear the matchless value it declares—undividable, must-not-be-broken, I am somebody, an individual. Yet individuals long to be not set apart. We seek unity, community, love, peace—a new heaven and a new earth. The matchless value in the hearts of all peoples in all times is that we may be one.

Christianity

Weekly Sermon – Tend My Sheep

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We make war for oil. The only security our wars buy this homeland is the security to keeping pumping oil and gas into our cars, factories, and homes. We are willing to frack the foundations of the earth and pour millions of gallons of toxic chemicals into vaults of the earth in order to get our fix of fossil fuels. For the sake of oil in the Middle East, our leaders will not challenge Israel to treat Palestinians justly. Food supplies and prices are threatened the world over as we turn food into gas for our cars and drive farm soils to ruin in a deluge of petrochemicals. Racism, the bastard of American slavery and many other evil fathers, is finally one more means by which the privileged keep economic benefits for themselves. Hoarding power is the motor inside the chariots of empire—and empire craves oil, coal, and gas to fuel the engines of wealth. Mass incarceration, wage stagnation over the last 40 years, the gutting of clean air and clean water regulations; an unjust, unaffordable health care system, rotting infrastructure, crumbling public education and the destruction of democracy—all these evils are driven by the unregulated desire of power to get more power by whatever means necessary. Climate change is nature’s blunt instrument to respond to systems which are fundamentally irresponsible. Capitalism, if unregulated, is simply sin. And the wages of sin is death.

Christianity

Hope and Guantanamo

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Those of us who live freely here in the United States may not realize how connected we are to the prisoners in Guantanamo. Their pain and their struggles may seem to have nothing to do with us. But we are connected to them, and to the people killed by U.S. drone strikes and other victims of our country’s foreign policy. I am a citizen. I pay taxes. I vote. I remain silent or I speak out. Our government can only take such actions through the active participation or the silent complicity of the people.