I’ve had an email draft sitting in one of my accounts for about a year and a half. It’s a compilation of links and research summaries that would have made a very good answer to a question from a friend of a friend. I spent more than half an hour searching Google and skimming abstracts for them. I […]
The best ways to kill
Sr. Helen Prejean, a member of the Congregation of St. Joseph, is the face of Ministry against the Death Penalty and author of Dead Man Walking and The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions. She has been mobilizing people to take action against legal executions in the United States for more than […]
Blood on the bench
The story of the Arkansas 8 dominated Easter weekend. Several men have been sentenced to die in Arkansas this month, and the governor of AR, “concerned” about the viability of the execution drugs, rush-scheduled a series of executions. Campaigners rallied to stop them, and have so far managed to hold off four. But one of […]
Honoring the forerunners
Tonight I helped Intersections International to celebrate its 10th anniversary and honor a forerunner in the Christian LGBTQIA and social justice movements. Dr. Randall Miller, now at the Arcus Foundation and formerly of both the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund and the Pacific School of Religion, grasped decades ago that religion can be a […]
The virtue you don’t want tested
Endurance. Perseverance. Persistence. Inner strength. Each of these virtues draws praise in an era that worships the rugged individual who conquers circumstance with dogged will and fortune (but mostly dogged will). Three months after the US presidential inauguration, the shine of “resistance” has dulled. So has the popular hope that we can abbreviate the next four to […]
Deciding when to opt out
One of the hardest things for a typically accommodating personality to do is decide who not to spend energy talking to. I’ve had to do it a few times over the last decade, and it’s not been something that’s ever felt good to me, not while I’m in the midst of it. Choosing not to […]
