Matthew 5:33-37, part of the gospels’ summary of Jesus’s teachings, challenges the way we handle the truth. And it’s a necessary challenge. Truth, embellishments, hedges, and avoidances all make business and interpersonal relationships that much more complicated. We’ve learned to distrust marketers and their advertising claims, and “Just give it to me straight” is a […]
It Will Take All of Us to Build a Just World
When the 2015 Urbana Missions Conference tackled race head-on last December, it seemed that the evangelical Christian community could finally say “Black Lives Matter” without hedging. Some dug through Urbana’s archives to find one of evangelicalism’s best preachers breaking down the American church’s history with systemic injustice and making the case for people of faith […]
Building Beloved Community on Bones?
The principles for managing great community conversations are about the same as the principles for managing great relationships: mutual respect, equity, integrity, freedom from violence or abuse, and a bias toward care and common growth. Last spring I worked with Daneen Akers and Stephen Eyer, co-directors of the narrative film Seventh-Gay Adventists, on a new […]
All Our Euphemisms Are Like Filthy Rags
Note: This article features Anansi, the Akan spider-man. And because I love you, it includes no images of actual spiders. —KM A lot of people I know skipped church last weekend. A lot of Black people I know skipped church last weekend. A sprinkling of days after a young White racist slaughtered nine praying Black people in the oldest African Methodist […]
At #GCAC14: Adventists Debate Women’s Ordination—Again
Today, about 20 minutes down the street from me, the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists is on Day 6 of its 2014 Annual Council meeting. The group reconvened for the afternoon session at 2 p.m. Eastern. The Annual Council meeting convenes church administrators from around the world each October to present progress reports on their […]
When Popular Analogies Steer Us Off-course
On Friday morning I eavesdropped on the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s Annual Council meeting at the denomination’s headquarters in central Maryland. Several voices will live-report on the 8-day meetings via the Twitter hashtag #GCAC14: follow along over the next week. Mark Finley is an Adventist statesman, an internationally known Adventist speaker and elder. For most of the 1990s […]