On March 7, 1965, 600 civil rights marchers left Selma, Alabama for Montgomery. Governor George Wallace called the march a threat to public safety and vowed to do all in is power to prevent this rabble from marching all the way to his office in Montgomery. When the 600 came to the Edmund Pettis Bridge, […]
Justice/Peace
This I Believe–In 8 Words
My church, the Episcopal Church, just concluded its national convention. Critics of liberal religion were quick to condemn the gathering for accommodating the timeless truth of the gospel to the whims of today’s culture. Ross Douthat of the New York Times had a suggestion for us. “The leaders of the Episcopal Church and similar bodies […]
Dropping Keys
We are living in a time when the standard versions of religion are losing their appeal. The spirituality offered by these traditions seems small and niggling. Whatever is intended, the message people are getting is mostly about who’s got the truth and who doesn’t, who belongs inside the circle and who doesn’t, who’s having the […]
Do One Small Thing
Statistics can paralyze. Of the world’s 6.8 billion people, 925 million don’t have enough to eat. That’s more than the population of the U.S., Canada and the European Union all put together. Global food prices are rising sharply—because of population increase, rising oil prices and climate change. The world’s poorest spend 80% of their income […]
The Most Premeditated of Murders
Tonight, Troy Davis is scheduled to be executed by the state of Georgia. He was convicted of the 1989 murder of a police officer. But twenty years later, seven of the nine “eye witnesses” have recanted their testimony, some citing police pressure. Even some death penalty advocates have declared that this case is too shaky […]
In Victory, Magnanimity
How soon we forget. Americans remember how painful it was, in the hours after 9/11 as we mourned our dead, to see garish, hideous images of people dancing in the streets. Who could rejoice at such a moment, much less take to the streets in a public dance of revenge? But there they were, […]