Privilege, power, and the myth of “all things equal”
In a just world, individuals and groups with a higher level of power and influence would be held to higher standards. In fact, it’s often just the opposite.
Abraham Lincoln’s letter to the American Baptist Home Mission Society
The year was 1864. The very fabric of the nation and the churches in America had been torn asunder by the Civil War. American Baptists were so passionate about the social justice issues that prompted the conflict, that representatives of the American Baptist Home Mission Society met with President Abraham Lincoln to share their loyalty to the North’s position.
What makes you so strong?
What makes us so strong? The strength to press through suffering is in the spiritual DNA of the black church. It was stamped into the conscious of a people who refused to be silenced.
What the Berlin Wall might teach us today
The fragment of the Berlin Wall that was torn down in 1989 is a reminder that building bridges of understanding is always better than building walls of separation and division. I think about the Berlin Wall as I watch our nation wrapped up over the question about a wall at the border that divides the United States and Mexico.
Martin Luther King Jr. Day and our walls
If we wish to do something about the condition of our country, if we seek to improve our individual and shared lives, then let us tear down the walls that exist between us. Let us instead use our energies to build paths to one another so that we can, together, create a more hopeful society.