Justice

1963 March on Washington

The Black Resistance Tradition and Its Fight for U.S. Democracy

Black America flipped the script on a racialized democratic state to make it more perfect. It is Black people’s fight that makes the United States exceptional. —Randal Jelks (2022) Many of us are profoundly worried about the health of American democracy. If so, we need to attend deeply to the deadly contradiction between structural racism and …

The Black Resistance Tradition and Its Fight for U.S. Democracy

War in Ukraine

Ukraine’s Just War

At one level, the Christian debate about the morality of war is ancient and timeless. Juxtaposed against the ubiquitous warfare of human history stands Jesus Christ, who taught enemy-love, nonretaliation and peacemaking, and went to his death on the Cross without defending himself. Anyone who takes the Gospel accounts of Jesus at all seriously must be …

Ukraine’s Just War

Blurry Hospital Emergency Room

Health Care Crises Reveal Our Nation’s Character Flaws

This is a column about crises and injustices in the health care system in America. I interpret these crises and injustices as an indictment on the character and the governance of this country. What follows is inspired by hard personal experience but relevant to all who have ears to hear. I make the following five claims: …

Health Care Crises Reveal Our Nation’s Character Flaws

Ancient painting of Jesus and the nativity

Christ Came to Make Us Truly Human: Social Ethics and the Image of Christ

Dietrich Bonhoeffer always brings me up short when he emphasizes the indicative rather than imperative voice in Paul’s thought and in Christian ethics more broadly. For example, in terms of Bonhoeffer’s work on image Christology, he emphasizes that the work of Christ in restoring the image of God in humanity is an accomplished fact, a reality …

Christ Came to Make Us Truly Human: Social Ethics and the Image of Christ

angry person with American flag

White hysteria, Critical Race Theory, and eyes that dare not see

The hysteria over Critical Race Theory right now means many things. Most immediately, it means that the relationship between skilled right-wing demagogues and their audience in the U.S. these days is positively Pavlovian. Stimulus-response, stimulus-response, rinse and repeat. If Tucker Carlson says over several nights on Fox News that Critical Race Theory is a huge threat …

White hysteria, Critical Race Theory, and eyes that dare not see

Scroll to Top