What troubled me most was the unmistakable presence of Christian symbols in the sea of law-abiding protestors, law-breaking rioters, and treasonous insurrectionists. Crosses and Jesus flags mixed freely with Trump banners and Confederate flags. They raise deep questions about what it means to be a follower of Christ in our deeply divided country.
Gary and I have had numerous requests for books (and of course, movies) to help people think through justice, race, and faith. This introductory list might be a good place to start.
On May 10, my daughters showed me Childish Gambino’s (Donald Glover’s) deeply disturbing Youtube sensation “This is America.” That evening, a department store in a suburban Knoxville shopping mall banned one of my dearest friends. His crime? Shopping while black.…
“That which is belittled in plain speech finds the respect it warrants in the subtleties of metaphor.” -Donald Braun
If white evangelicals wish to be reconciled with people of color, then they should confess precisely how they have been possessed by something other than the faith they proclaim, irrespective of the repercussions that will befall the penitent and their structures of power.
My last name and appearance immediately instills a set of biases before I have the chance to open my mouth. The professor’s “blue pen was the catalyst that opened an ocean of self-doubt that I worked so hard to destroy.
The First Great Awakening was one of the few times in American history when the church actually led the way in racial unity.
Efrem Smith and Gary David Stratton provided black and white perspectives on Unity and Reconciliation in the body of Christ in Johnson University’s kickoff to Black History Month.
As anger over race relations leads to rallies, sit-ins and several prominent resignations of administrators, experts consider the messages, the tactics and the backlash. Four opinions.
The lines that divide the religious from the political have always been more porous than Thomas Jefferson’s imagined “wall of separation” between church and state. Black churches exist as simultaneously religious and political institutions, and that has made them targets.