I went to the theater alone, feeling small and bereft. At the urging of a friend, I went to see Marcel the Shell With Shoes On. I felt my smallness increase as the theater darkened. Then suddenly, there was Marcel, a one-inch-tall shell, blinking back at me. Marcel is soft-spoken, inquisitive, and wears pink shoes.
The June release of a Climate Vigil The Porter’s Gate Worship Project aims to nudge Christians toward climate action, but it isn’t alone among contenders to inspire the climate movement. For over 20 years, Carolyn Winfrey Gillette, a Presbyterian minister from New York, has written hymns for the times, including one for the 2021 UN climate talks held in Scotland and several to recognize increasing natural disasters such as wildfires, hurricanes, and floods. Fossil Free PCUSA, a campaign within the Presbyterian Church (USA) has used hymns in protests, including songs by Christian artist Matthew Black.
A judge sentenced Travis McMichael to life in prison on Aug. 8 for committing federal hate crimes in the 2020 killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man shot while jogging through a mostly white Georgia neighborhood in a case that probed issues of racist violence and vigilantism in the United States.
Seattle Pacific University announced on July 28 that it is suing Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson, after the attorney general opened an investigation into whether SPU was violating the state’s anti-discrimination laws. SPU, which is affiliated with the Free Methodist Church, contends that Ferguson’s investigation is a violation of the school’s religious freedom.
The question, for all of us, is what do abusers gain by offering vague apologies? What are they trying to achieve? The men and their supporters are attempting to weaponize a Christian culture of unending forgiveness. While forgiveness is indeed a virtue, it should never come at the expense of those harmed. [John] Crist and [Deshaun] Watson (and their colleagues) refuse to properly repent, apologize, or seek to repair the harm they are accused of. Instead, they ask their victims — and us — to move on.
Despair blossomed in me; my fears of what my life and the lives of future generations could become seem to be coming true. I take my bouquet of despair to the only place big enough to embrace it: the body of Creation. I set it before the altar of the water and soil.
My school tried to purge any evidence of liberation theologies, Christian critiques of the economy, or radical solidarity with the poor, hoping to indoctrinate students with a conservative ideology. But there was an underground community at my school that helped me make a pivotal realization: By Christian college standards, Jesus would be labeled “an extreme leftist” because he embodied class solidarity with the poor, damned the rich, and imagined an alternative community. That gospel appealed to me in college; it still appeals to me today.
Clergy members of five religions sued the state of Florida on Monday over a new law criminalizing most abortions in the state after 15 weeks of pregnancy, saying the ban violates their religious freedom rights.
In leaving the church, earning a Ph.D., coming to terms with who I am as a NonBinary Transgender Latinx, dosing testosterone each week, deepening my antiracist awareness, and learning about embodiment, I’ve encountered a lot of change.
Ronald J. Sider, founder of Christians for Social Action and a stalwart evangelical advocate for social justice, died of a cardiac arrest on July 27. He was 82 years old.