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By Kathryn Post
(RNS) — ‘The biggest lesson I had to learn is that God’s lack of an answer to my prayers to change me was an answer, because there was…
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Gather Round the Forge (An Excerpt from Beating Guns)
By RLC Editor
Not many people get argued into thinking differently, but experiences and stories move us, especially when we have the humility to listen and to view the world from a different…
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Changing the Way I Approach Abortion
By Sarah Styf
I’m ready to leave behind the language and baggage of the pro-life movement to explore a politically unattached whole-life ethic.
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What Lil Nas X is Telling Us About the Hell We Create
By Mark Bauer
But the more I’ve consumed content by artists like Lil Nas X, the more I realize the church and some of the puritanical standards I parroted end up creating a…
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Welcome to Wilderness Church: Where Stubborn Faith Makes Resurrection Possible
It is a mass exodus of individuals. And it is a lonely exodus. Not only have I lost the community I once had, I found myself without a community to…
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Easter Won’t be Cancelled
By Morf Morford
Perhaps the lesson of Easter still stands: no stone, no guards, no jeering crowds, no pious bureaucracy, no political compromise will ever hold back, or even begin to contain the…
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Sandbox Revolution: Raising Kids for a Just World
I think am learning more and more that the best parenting I can do is to let my kids lead and to let them change me.
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Easter, Extinction, and Nonviolent Direct Action
If Christmas is the season to be jolly, maybe—if the Gospels are anything to go by—Easter is the season for Christians to go to jail.
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Via Dolorosa, Minneapolis: The Suffering Crowd
With each tearful testimony, I think of what happened on that street in Minneapolis, as regular people watched heartless authorities while a man died unjustly. And I remember what happened…
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Easter Encouragement for the Spiritually Homeless
I can at least aim for a level of peace that transcends understanding. “Christ The Lord is Risen Today” will surely be available on YouTube.
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Christian Patriarchy Is Just Patriarchy
Christian patriarchy does not remain confined within the walls of our homes. It does not stay behind our pulpits. It cannot be peeled off suit coats like a name tag…
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How Much Hate Does It Take to Make a Hate Crime?
But that type of Jesus: inclusive, universal, loving, forgiving; was nowhere to be found at Crabapple First Baptist. And so Long learned to hate.
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Moving from Exclusion to Embrace in the Gender Conversation
My hope is that this work will become a resource and a way to respond, understanding very well that there’s still a whole lot more to unravel.
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Maybe It’s Time to Rethink the Second Amendment
The Second Amendment offers neither the moral authority nor unlimited legal authority for gun ownership. It is time that Americans, and especially my fellow evangelical Christians, refocus the faith they…
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The Problem of Cultural Comfort Zones
If we’re serious about pursuing deep and meaningful cross-cultural relationships, we need to put in a bit more work. We can’t just live in our own lane and interact when someone…
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Asian American Christian Collaborative Statement on the Atlanta Massacre & Ongoing Anti-Asian Hate
AACC also cries out against violence perpetrated in the name of Christianity. We condemn the evasion of responsibility by churches and denominations that have historically perpetuated the social conditions for…
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Never Again: A Litany for Rebuking Mass Shootings
I desperately need for not one more presidential term, one more year, one more month, one more sermon, one more day to go by without the country and the church—filled…
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Maewyn Succat and the Radical Forgiveness of Saint Patrick
Are you angry? Are you resentful and bitter over the past? Are there those whom you cannot or will not forgive? Maewyn Succat would tell us that with God’s help, there…
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One State Solution in Israel/Palestine? A Conversation and Review
He recounts a vision, like John-the-seer in the book of Revelation. Except his is not a binary vision of heaven’s victory and evil’s defeat, but of nonviolent generosity and mutual…
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The Use of Violence to Advance Political Goals
Distressingly, the language of spiritual warfare has transitioned into the sort of religious rhetoric that lends support to literal civil war, or at least religiously sanctioned violence.
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Choosing Love at Belonging’s Expense and Wondering What Now
It is awfully convenient to believe the right thing to do is whatever you want, at anyone else’s expense. It felt like the lives of the sick and vulnerable didn’t…
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On the Anniversary of the Shut-Down: A Prayer for What Was, Is, and Is to Come
It’s been a long road, and it’s not over, though it does seem to be changing. And we felt we couldn’t let this moment pass without marking it together in…
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Asking the Right Questions About LGBTQ Youth Will Transform Youth Ministry Into Public Witness
By Ross Murray
Logistical questions cannot be answered out of context. Instead, we need to address the mindset Christian leaders need to have when we are considering how our ministries can build a…
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US Military Attacks on Syria Detrimental to Peace
The United States must recognize the harmful effects of its current and historic foreign policy in the Middle East, and begin working toward a better future.
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A More Holistic Response to the Immigration Crisis
One of the key obstacles in moving progressive immigration policies from support to reality is the lack of passion and hope.
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World Beyond Words
Imperfect, abnormal, disabled in the eyes of the world, “despised and rejected of men,” it is they who meet life with the indomitable strength of the divine realm, while I…
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Dismantling the White Nationalist Jesus
There can be only one Jesus, and he was a person of color murdered in the streets simply for proclaiming God’s kingdom, where the poor are blessed, not forgotten.
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US Missile Strike in Syria: What You Should Know
By RLC Editor
We cannot bomb our way to peace. What is imperative is that we don’t lose sight of the civilians and families whose homes and communities in Syria and Iraq bear…
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What Does It Mean To Be Disembodied?
Reembodied people reembody others: they help give back all the pieces of life that get boxed, cut-off, disintegrated, scorned.
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You Don’t Have to Go Home But You Can’t Stay Here
Letting go of the past and moving forward is a splendid suggestion. I’m just wondering how ministers and pastors will entice people to return to church. We saw how easily…
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Again and Again: A Song for Lent
By The Many
There’s lament – “Why are things so broken – again and again – where has all the mercy gone.” But also this gratitude – “again and again”– in the midst…
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Mixed Blessing and the Experience of Double Minorities
It’s so important for us multiethnic folks to hear these truths. Contrary to the lies that the evil one whispers in our ears, we are not cosmic mishaps.
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Identifying Spiritual Abuse
Today, it is darkly comedic, the irony of this moment. At the time, it was crushing. Who was I to propose such a thing? Had I witnessed any of what…
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The Idolatry of Christian Nationalism
Evil attacks Christians by tricking them into believing they’re “being biblical” when in reality they aren’t being Christlike.
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Say ‘No’ to Christian Nationalism: Evangelical Leaders Statement
By RLC Editor
We recognize that evangelicalism, and white evangelicalism, in particular, has been susceptible to the heresy of Christian nationalism because of a long history of faith leaders accommodating white supremacy. We…
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Dear Church: Is the Gospel Second to Power?
By Sarah Styf
How can a community of believers maintain that strength if the truth is buried for the sake of power, if the Gospel plays second fiddle to money, and if appearances…
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Revelation’s Warning About Christian Nationalism
We must not sell our souls for the lesser power of nationalism, for nationalism will reap what it sows and get what it deserves—which from John’s perspective, is death.
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A Viral Prayer in the Age of COVID-19
It was a moment, a moment of extraordinary unity and goodwill. I am afraid the moment has passed. We are a year in now.
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The Continued Challenges of the Trumpism Movement
By Terry Webb
This theocratic theology contrasts with historic Christian polity, based on the life and teachings of Jesus who espouses a domain called the Kingdom of Heaven, different from and challenging to…
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How Not to be a Crappy Christian
As professors—one a politically-engaged theologian and the other a theologically-engaged political scientist—we admit that this situation leaves us concerned and scratching our heads. In our current American context, we wonder:…
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Jesus Invited Women to Take Their Place
Throughout history, women overwhelmingly have been silenced when they’ve had a truth to tell, so much so that it felt detrimental to speak up. A waste of words. Yet Jesus,…
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Silence: The Facilitator of Clergy Abuse
The epidemic of clergy misconduct is not only the abuse itself, but the Silence that enables the abuse to continue to exponentially harm people. While perpetrators will always exist, the…
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Sunday Words on Weekdays
The loved one is in prison, the hospital, hospice, quarantine, or serving abroad. Some extended families face all of these circumstances at once right now. Yet the scriptures don’t avoid…
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How to Do Church During a Pandemic
By Andrew Lee
Especially during a time when it feels like we are all suffering, when no one is really “healthy” and giving out of an abundance of energy, time, or resources, I…
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Look for the Helpers
By Paul Demer
What can the “look for the helpers” advice do for us in these times? I suggest that, while it doesn’t diminish the painful realities of our corporate life, it does offer us one path through the…
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Letting Go of Judgement—An Excerpt from ‘Learning to Be’
When I’m tempted to judge someone or a situation, I’m being invited to ask myself, Why do I think what I’m thinking? What am I feeling? How do I act…
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At The Chapel’s Door: How Bruce Springsteen’s Jeep Ad Displays the Roots of Anti-Asian Violence
By Lucas Kwong
With all due respect to the literal house of worship that stands at the center of the lower 48, we should not be working to preserve a chapel founded on…
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Severing the Ties Between Amazon, Christianity, and the Failed White Nationalist Coup
Unless the church in America is to be consigned to the ash heap of social history, we must identify actions that are hateful and unchristian, cast them out, and redouble…
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2021 #BlackHistoryMonth Recommendations for All Ages
This is my top 10 list of books and viewing for February 2021. Please engage these resources this Black History Month and beyond!
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A Former Confederate State Just Voted To Abolish Its Death Penalty
But it’s worth celebrating Virginia, the “home of the Confederacy,” as the first state in the old Confederate South to abolish the death penalty. The two facts are related, because…
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The Week After MLK Day
The misuse of his words imply that King was primarily teaching a minority people how to suffer well rather than pushing for personal change within the hearts of, and systemic…
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The Ministers of Insurrection
The Gospel of Matthew ends with the Great Commission; and no matter how much you twist those scriptures there is no amount of theological gymnastics that can get you to…
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Still Christian? A Prayer for the Reckoning
We are witnessing the ways that Christianity’s tentacles have bound themselves to patriarchy, nationalism, and white supremacy. For many of us rooted in this tradition, this is a moment of…
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Idolatry, Administrations, and Evangelicals: A Conversation Between Shane Claiborne and Johnnie Moore
By RLC Editor
But you know, I’m not a single-issue person either. I mean, my ethic is one of life. I believe every person is made in the image of God. So for…
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With New Executive Order, This Immigrant Is Leaving Church Sanctuary After 3.5 Years
Jose Chicas, a native of El Salvador who has been living in church sanctuary for more than three years, [moved] out Friday (Jan. 22) after President Joe Biden signed an…
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The Beginning of the End for Nuclear Weapons
By John Dear
Friday, the U.N. treaty declared that the manufacture, possession, use or threat to use nuclear weapons is illegal under international law, 75 years after their development and first use.
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Where Do We Go from Here?
Our country is aching to see the strength it takes to accept responsibility for more than our own individual acts. To be wrong, and admit it. To be the first…
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Revolutionary Love Is The Way To Racial Healing
Within our denominations, grassroots justice organizations, organizing networks, and movement partners, we have engaged in the best of our sacred traditions to pursue a vision of Beloved Community, of an…
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Insisting on Healing May be the Death of Us
Christians are often among the worst at calling for unity in the aftermath of great injustice; there is a pervasive idea that Jesus was a really nice guy who wants…
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This May Not be a Time for an Altar Call to Unity
Jesus doesn’t bundle salvation or healing. He touches individuals. He speaks to the particular pain of each person. He restores the soul of the singular that then speaks to the…
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What is In Your House?
“First and Only” is a leadership resource for Black women who have found themselves in the position of being the first or the only. Unlike most leadership books, my work speaks to the…
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Why I Cannot Stay: A Letter to My Church
There is no use pointing fingers. That is not them. That is us. We dragged Jesus—the one who died for us—into our tryst with Trump, while the church sat by with…
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‘Not Real Christians’: Communal Confession for a Faith Divided
We must still raise our voices to denounce Christian pursuit of power and boldly denounce cycles of violence perpetuated in the name of Jesus. We also seek that justice be…
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Who Has Your Trousers? Keeping Company in the Darkness
By Diana Gruver
I’ve spent time over the last few years researching people in church history who struggled with depression, but intertwined with their stories are those of their friends and family members…
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The Cost of Believing Liars
Trump supporting evangelicals have shown that while they may be honest in their personal lives among friends and family, their commitment to truthfulness in public affairs is absent. Their ethical…
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Is Killing Lisa Montgomery the Best Version of Justice We Have?
None of us is above reproach and none of us is beyond redemption. That is a core truth of the Christian faith. And it is a truth that is undermined…
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Capitol Storm: What Should Come as No Surprise
Let us tell our children the truth about what happened this week at the Capitol: white supremacists and domestic terrorists, deceived and deluded and power hungry, attempted to violently overthrow…
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Hope, Homelessness, and COVID-19
By Kevin Nye
Instead, we perpetuate myths about homelessness that embolden our stance against policy that will set them free. We stay secure in our implicit and explicit beliefs that certain people have…
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La’s Skid Row Doesn’t Need Sean Feucht’s ‘Revival’
In an attempt to defend his event, Feucht accused these pastors of preventing him from “bringing Jesus to the streets of LA.” Dear Sean: Jesus is already on Skid Row.
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When Legal Is Unjust, Prophetic Resistance Is Required
By Bob Ekblad
Presidential pardons of soldiers and US Government contractors guilty of war crimes, billions of dollars in benefits for the rich and powerful tucked away in the 5,000 + page Congressional…
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Subversive Peace for this Christmas Season
By Joel Jackson
It is to this group of social outcasts that God chooses to make an announcement of astonishingly good news—good news in which God declares a true peace that subverts the…
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How Being Awakened to Death Can Help Us Live
It’s a mystery our culture often refuses to face, Peterson argues; and while her book was written almost entirely before the Covid pandemic, this contemplation of death—our cultural refusal to…
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Oh God, Where Are You Now?
If you’re on any kind of a spiritual journey, there inevitably comes a day when all the usual “lights” go out.
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Kingdom of God, Kingdoms of Men
The Evangelical Church’s support of a president who counters the life and teachings of Jesus actually makes sense when you take Jesus out of the equation.
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Emmanuel Understands Limitations
By Sue Fulmore
While rulers in Palestine at the time of Jesus’s coming clutched their power, the King-over-all was laying his down. He ushered in a new order, an upside-down kingdom.
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Hope’s Beautiful Daughters
Donald Trump may have lost the election, but it looks like Trumpism is here to stay. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined a well-defined ideology characterized by…
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True Prophecy in an Age of Deception
By Bob Ekblad
Endorsing, pledging one’s allegiance, and putting undue hope and trust in a human leader counts as “worshipping and serving,” and idolatry that must be named and renounced. Jeremiah’s words ring…
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Love is the Most Important Command
Maybe we fear that love is a zero-sum game, that if we give of ourselves there might not be anything left for us. But love is not about self-abnegation.
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God’s Up to Something: Laboring in Expectation
What a time to be alive. What a time to be a part of a movement, a revolution, a holy uprising of love in the world. Thank you for being…
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Next Most Faithful Steps in Healing Divided Community
By Dori Baker
Our journey together ended with a question: What is the connection between the small acts of neighborly love that most Christians don’t think twice about in our everyday lives—stopping by…
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Midwives of a New World
We need a more robust theology of a God who suffers with us—who was born on the margins and executed on the cross, who knows what it feels like to…
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On Evangelical Conspiracy Theories
The conspiracy theory maintains the fear that fuels white supremacy. It grants power to those who have craved it all their lives. It maintains power for those who had always…
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Vulnerability Springs Forth Connection
By Andrew Lee
That kind of vulnerability touches on our deepest need to be known and accepted by another. It reminds us that we were not meant to be our own salvation. It…
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Patriarchy and the Gender of God
By Jon Mathieu
This ought to disturb us on a theological level alone. Why are we using language about a non-gendered or gender-expansive God that makes us view God in accordance with deeply…
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Hope in Hard Times: An Element of Our Prophetic Vocation
By Julia Walsh
I continue to be challenged by the ongoing need for reconstruction, for the building of a society not based on the evils of systemic racism and environmental degradation; it’s big,…
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Liturgy in the Time of COVID
These days, my emotions are not a reliable source. They are up and down and back and forth and all over the place, telling me stories and lies and leading…
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Where Do I Put My Body this Advent?
And so dear friends, let the darkness cradle your weary body close. Then gather your candles, and find a place stand.
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A Year of No Thanks
We shouldn’t be grateful for COVID, for the political chaos, for the broken climate, for economic suffering. But we can be grateful through these times, while we are struggling in…
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Causing Others to Stumble: A Plea to Believers
Wickedness is white supremacy. Wickedness is supporting systems that discard women deemed “unworthy” by the rest of the world. I told her that my speck of dirt on a mustard…
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Liberty, Obedience, and Discipleship
By Bill Cayley
Calls to use sensible public health measures to stop the spread of COVID are not persecution, they are simply measures to protect our society and those around us. If we…
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Moving On from ‘Cheap Unity’
By Jon Mathieu
Perhaps this contrast—the real, difficult version of something held up against the cheap and easy imitation—will help us navigate the disaster of American disunity.
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In a New Moment, Do a New Thing
Fully understanding how American democracy went all the way to the brink in 2020 will take years of study, and we must embark upon it in a spirit of honesty…
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William Barr and the Politics of Death
We are not executing the ‘worst of the worst,’ as some may believe, but the poorest of the poor, and disproportionately people of color.
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Over 13,000+ Christians Call on Pastors Franklin Graham and Paula White-Cain to Accept President-Elect Biden’s Victory
By RLC Editor
Despite President-elect Joe Biden’s clear electoral victory and the complete absence of evidence behind Donald Trump’s lawsuits, multiple prominent evangelical leaders are continuing to enable the outgoing president’s dangerous attacks…
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Giving (Not Taking) is the Mark of the Believer
By Morf Morford
How Christianity went from a faith based on sacrificial giving to an institutional blessing of taking will certainly be a challenge for historians untangle. If there were ever a faith with…
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To My White Evangelical Friends: A Response to the Exit Polls
How often does revival have to walk out of church in order to survive? How many awakened souls will have to leave the institution before the pain of staying the…
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A New Chapter in the American Experiment
So today, let us celebrate. And tomorrow, let us organize. We are still in a battle for the soul of our nation, and for the soul of our faith. This…
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When Religion Becomes Idolatry
By Suzie Lahoud
Yes, I am talking about white supremacy, but the kind comfortably ensconced in a leather chair smoking a cigar. I am talking about xenophobia, but the kind safely domesticated behind…
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A Practical View of White American Folk Religion Contrasted with Real Christianity
81% of White Evangelicals voted for Donald Trump to Make America Great Again. But it was not Christianity that got him elected. White American Folk Religion (WAFR) did. This ideology,…
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Why I’m Voting for the First Time in 28 Years
For Republicans and white Christians who feel like they would be losing something by not voting in line with the Republican party: more is at stake in the 2020 election…
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We Ring Our Bells for You, America
At noon on each day of the week prior to November 3rd—and each hour on the hour as Americans vote on Election Day—faith communities in all 50 states will ring…