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 change within the structures of, majority peoples.
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 reckoning with its violence.
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.
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 to apologize. To accept the hard truth that we’ve sown bitterness and are reaping violence. Violence doesn’t start in our fists, it is born in our hearts.
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 every time we execute someone.
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 Relief Bill, and Federal death row executions grieve me deeply, demonstrating the ongoing relevancy of the words of OT prophets: 'Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands far away . . . '
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 ways of the Empire.
Let not our hearts sink into anxiety and dread by the unceasing spin cycle of 24 hour news or the bread and circuses of the imperial intrigue. Instead . . .
Some individuals who have fled countries internally disrupted by bloody violence have warned that what they see taking place in the U.S. is troublingly similar to what they saw happening in their own countries. Warning lights are flashing