A friend on facebook pled, “I beg everyone not to use #alllivesmatter.” If someone else had asked me not to use the hashtag, someone hateful—who didn’t believe that all lives did matter—the request would have been easy to dismiss. But because it was from a friend I trust, a wife and mother who worries about…
If my experience of trying to root out my racial bias and racist tendencies is at all normative, one of the most significant barriers is defensiveness. Though it makes complete sense for whites to feel defensive when the topic of racism comes up, if we want to bring this systemic sin to an end, we…
I have the pleasure of introducing you to Jenny Rae Armstrong, a teaching pastor of Darrow Road Wesleyan Church in Superior, Wisconsin. Jenny is an award-winning freelance journalist who writes about faith, social justice, missional living and women’s issues for Christian publications such as Relevant, Her.meneutics, Mutuality and Red Letter Christians. She is a…
“It was the Sunday I hated most of the whole year,” writes Marlo Schalesky in Empty Womb, Aching Heart. “There was a huge vase at the front of the church filled with dozens of beautiful long-stemmed pink roses. . . One rose for each mother in the congregation. Of course, I wouldn’t receive one because…
I fell in love with Charleston the first time I set foot there, probably because it was so different from where I grew up and now live, the flat plains of the Midwest. I had never been to a place with such character, beauty, and history all wrapped into one quaint package, complete with horse-drawn…
You move along a sidewalk in a busy city. You can see your breath with each exhale into the winter air. A homeless man comes into view leaning back on the building ahead. Do you… a) Avert your eyes and keep walking?It’s as if not seeing him, makes him not real. b) Drop a few…
Christians fall into two categories. Of course, there are many more than two, but for the purposes of this letter I’m sticking with these two: There are those who want to stand for truth above all and there are those who want to have peace above all. If you are in the latter group, this…
As I said in “An Open Letter to Truth-Loving Christians,” Christians fall into two categories. Of course, there are many more than two, but for the purposes of this letter I’m addressing these two: There are those who want to stand for truth above all and there are those who want to have peace above…
I have a fierce desire to protect women’s rights and to promote their well being. Because of that, I didn’t immediately jump on the pro-life bandwagon. It sounded like a good, spiritual thing to protect the unborn, but I was worried about the woman’s, yes, right to choose. But I wanted to do volunteer work….
Yesterday I got a knock on my office door. A young man from one of my classes stopped by for some help with a paper, so, as is my personality, I tried to break the ice by asking about his weekend. “Oh, it was O.K.,” he said with a slight grin. “One part was a…
Most people in our generation will always remember where they were and what they were doing on September 11, 2001. It is actually September 12 that sticks in my mind as a pivotal day in my life and faith. On 9/11 I did what thousands of others probably did. I sat glued to the television,…
Though I have spent over three months in India, all told, my grasp of Hindi doesn’t extend past a few memorized phrases and songs. I have never sat down and really studied the beautiful language for myself. One thing I do know is that Hindi doesn’t have a definite article comparable to the English “the”…
Recently I read Ann Voskamp’s beautiful, heart wrenching post about the situation in Iraq. In it she outlines the impossible choices children face there – girls sold into sexual slavery, forced to have their virginity surgically remade only to be taken again and again. Children denied an education. Babies as young as three years old…
Most people in our generation will always remember where they were and what they were doing on September 11, 2001. It is actually September 12 that sticks in my mind as a pivotal day in my life and faith. On 9/11 I did what thousands of others probably did. I sat glued to the television,…