Arts & Culture
A woman protestson the capitol steps after a jury found Jeronimo Yanez not guilty of second-degree manslaughter in the death of Castile, in St. Paul, Minn. REUTERS/Eric Miller
Video footage of the fatal shooting of a black motorist by a Minnesota police officer released on Tuesday showed how quickly the incident unfolded but shed no light on whether the victim had reached for the gun he told the officer he was carrying.
In a nation founded on violence, how are we to respond when young indigenous people are beaten to death by police or young black men are shot in the front seat of their cars? What do we do when young Muslim women are assaulted on the way to say prayers with their community? In an attempt to protect ourselves from violence, we actually bring violence to our schools and neighborhoods, because we live a gospel of violence perpetuated over time by our attitudes of hate and racism toward one another.
FILE PHOTO - Minnesota police officer Jeronimo Yanez. Courtesy of Ramsey County Sheriff's Office/Handout via REUTERS
After five days of deliberation, a jury has found the police officer who fatally shot Philando Castile not guilty on all charges.
I believe that although we enjoy fairytales about love overcoming great obstacles, it’s often different off-screen. We are more interested in creating obstacles to love. In our world, Cinderella doesn’t get to dance with the prince and beauty isn’t allowed to love the beast.
Image via The Wedding Plan website
Film critic Alissa Wilkinson writes that “Christian theology is rich and ... full of imagination that's broad enough to take up residence among all kinds of human cultures. It contains within itself the idea that art exists as a good unto itself, not just a utilitarian vehicle for messages.” The Wedding Plan is a prime example of this kind of religious art. It’s a message movie, a window into a culture that makes the specific and personal universally relatable, and still manages to tell a good story.
The long history between the church and LGBTQ people is one fraught with tension, pain, and, sometimes, violence. Those who believe that homosexuality is a sin often point to several well-known Scripture passages from the Old and New Testaments. Most of the Christian debate about human sexuality has centered on interpretation and emphasis of these passages.
In his book God and the Gay Christian , Christian LGBTQ activist Matthew Vines challenges LGBTQ-condemning interpretations of these Scriptures — sometimes referred to as “clobber passages.” But these clobber-texts aren’t the only Scriptures that can guide faithful Christians as we seek a godly understanding of sexual and gender identity.
For many Asian immigrants and refugees, coming to the United States wasn’t fully voluntary, but a result of war and poverty. Just as the Hebrews needed to learn to live as exiles, Asian Americans needed to find a way to make a new home in a new land. While their hardships reflect the difficulty of exile, Jimmy’s and Mary’s familial love and corporate responsibility also model for me how we Christians are to follow Jesus in the midst of this empire.
Patty Jenkins on set / courtesy of Warner Bros.
Wonder Woman, directed by Patty Jenkins, now holds the title of biggest box office opening for a female-directed film.
Image via Wonder Woman Facebook Group
At first glance, the meaning behind this tagline for Wonder Woman feels obvious, it is the next step on the DC franchise road to November’s Justice League movie. But of course, there’s more to it than that. Wonder Woman marks a feminist milestone, too, one that feels like artistic justice: it’s the first major superhero movie to feature a female hero, and the first to use a female director, Patty Jenkins.
Image via War Machine Facebook Page
The biggest issue War Machine faces is that satire seems to be the wrong track for the movie to take. War and soldiers are difficult subjects to make funny. The best that writer-director Michôd can manage is to provide the stars — like Pitt and his military cohort — with a couple of strange quirks to color their performances. Sometimes these characterizations feel lazy, other times like the actors are trying too hard. The humor, when it’s there, feels forced.
San Fernando Cathedral with Native American Light Show in San Antonio, Texas. Kelly vanDellen / Shutterstock.com
A young indigenous man from the Quinault Indian Nation was killed on Saturday night by a man witnesses describe as a white, in his 30s, who shouted racial slurs before backing over two men with his pickup truck, reports the Seattle Times. But you probably haven’t heard this news, not with all the other news floating through cyberspace.
FILE PHOTO -- Jun 9, 2015; Cleveland, Ohio; Tadar Muhammad (right) and Jeremy Brustein (left) demonstrate in support of Tamir Rice. Credit: Ken Blaze-USA TODAY Sports/File Photo
An Ohio police officer who fatally shot a black 12-year-old boy in 2014 was fired on Tuesday following an internal investigation, city officials said. Timothy Loehmann, a rookie with the Cleveland Division of Police, shot Tamir Rice, who was playing in a playground with a toy gun that fired pellets.
Screenshot from "Despacito"/YouTube
Why did it take clichéd pop verses in English — lyrics that could be copy-and-pasted to any Bieber song and wouldn’t feel out of place — and some mediocre Spanish singing for “Despacito" to get its due?
No longer will I be the single woman in my 30s, always a bridesmaid but never a bride. It doesn’t mean that I will not struggle to trust God with my life. But it will be a reminder to me — and to all our witnesses — that God does answer prayer, and all the suffering and sorrow that came before can been remade into something more glorious than it was before.
Image via carmichaellibrary/flickr.com
Charges of first-degree murder, second-degree murder, and first-degree assault have been brought against Urbanski, whose attorney has stated that Urbanksi was under the influence of alcohol when he killed Collins III. However, Urbanski is a member of the now-defunct Facebook group “Alt-Reich: Nation,” on which there are expressions of hatred against Jews, women, and people of color.
1. You Must Understand Why You Believe What You Believe — and How You Got There
In a world in which your opinions on a topic can change with a well-worded “well, actually” tweet, it’s more important than ever that we examine the roots of our beliefs. Read how, from The Establishment.
Image via Gaurdians of the Galexy Facebook Page
This is reminiscent of a time when European and American men went to Asia in the attempt to save Asian women from their own countries, or use Asian women for their pleasure, or — in many cases — both. In Pierre Loti’s 1983 novel, Madame Chrysanthéme, he writes a story of an affair between a French naval officer and a wife he’s taken in Japan. Loti describes the woman and her friends as docile, submissive, and overtly feminine, much like how Mantis is described by other characters in the movie, from Ego to the overtly masculine Drax.
Image via RNS/Google
The Jesuit-run St. Francis Mission, which serves the Lakota peoples in south-central South Dakota, announced it will return about 500 acres to the Rosebud Sioux tribe, a band of Lakotas with a reservation in the same area.
The land was given to the Jesuits in the 19th century by the U.S. government. It is in multiple parcels across several counties, and includes some now-closed churches and other church structures.
Image via Creative Commons-BY/Brooklyn Museum
“It’s quite unique for us,” Antinori, whose mother’s family includes three popes in the 18th and 19th centuries, said. “To have the commissioner — our ancestor, in this case — also represented in a piece is unique.”
Image via Disney
In Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, out this weekend, Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Drax (Dave Bautista), Rocket, (Bradley Cooper) and Groot, (Vin Diesel) are still learning lessons in openness and humility. But oddly, the film they’re in needs help maintaining emotional honesty, too. Where the first movie kept a fine balance of pathos and jokes, the second Guardians film is almost caustically cynical. The film is so preoccupied with witty banter that it misses nearly every opportunity to plumb the depths of the themes it presents, until finally pulling it together at the very end.