This week I’m reading a remarkable essay by Joanne Carlson Brown and Rebecca Parker on the many, many ways that theologians and activists have explained redemptive suffering, punishment, and justice. It’s part of the old collection Christianity, Patriarchy, and Abuse. What’s fascinating about the arguments I’ve read so far is that they’re more than 28 […]
A sense of scale
I went on a long walk after work yesterday—about 40 New York City blocks. Some of that time I spent in the thick of a massive, traffic-snarling street march; the rest of the time I walked parallel to it instead. We’d been blanketed in grey clouds all day, and it was finally drizzling. Just when I’d […]
Video: Romany Malco on the history of prison labor
I can’t think of the last time I saw a nearly 20-minute video gain so much traction on Facebook. This one, a historical review from actor Romany Malco, has gotten more than 1.1 million views in just two days. Apparently people want to know more about how the United States got to its current position […]
Photo: Responding to the Cruciform Life
The first presentation is complete! This afternoon, I responded to Greg Boyd’s treatment of Christian discipleship as the call to live cruciform, in the form of the cross. Boyd has argued that Christians have a responsibility to shape their lives in terms of self-sacrifice. Grounded in Black history and theologies, I suggested that this teaching […]
Writing from The Justice Conference
In popular culture, doing business is synonymous with taking action. Flip open a magazine about business or entrepreneurship and you’ll see articles and imagery about design scrums, mergers, stocks and sales, commercial transportation options, the best ways to expand, and ideal places to travel on your down time. Vacations, too, are framed in terms of […]
Defining “Us”
A few recent headlines on climate and environmental justice: While Shell’s Perdido platform has spilled 90,000 gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, and Shell faces a lawsuit on behalf of communities in Nigeria, Exxon’s shareholders have rejected proposals to include a climate change expert on their corporate board or consider how global carbon-reduction agreements would impact the company. Residents […]