Rev. Dr. Jacqueline Lewis

I’m bone tired of being told why I should fear the other guy. Not because I’m not afraid—Lord help me, I’m terrified—but because fear will never move hearts and minds like an appeal to who could become.

Donald Trump promised, “In four more years, you won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.” His words are starkly anti-democratic and—from a candidate who incited a mob to attempt a deadly coup—deeply disturbing.

When I watched—repeatedly—the news report of the assassination attempt against Donald Trump, my heart time-travelled. To Robert Kennedy shot dead. To Martin King and Malcolm X, shot dead. To John Kennedy, shot dead. To Gabby Gifford, Ronald Reagan and George Wallace. To the people acting very surprised at this violent act, I say, “Why are you surprised? This is a shoot-em-up nation.

And I’m puzzled about how we got to a place in this nation’s story in which an 81- year-old president and a 78-year-old former president—a convicted felon—are on that debate stage together and we somehow did not expect what happened.

When they sang together, you could hear the harmony that should define this country’s relationships across race.

If we want peace, it has to start with us. We must uproot violence from our language, in the ways we relate to one another.

If we want peace, it has to start with us. We must uproot violence from our language, in the ways we relate to one another.

Does Jesus really mean we must love our neighbor? And who is our neighbor?

We are living in a world divided. Race and ethnicity, caste and color, gender and sexuality, class and education, religion and political party have all become demographic labels that reduce our differences to simplistic categories in which “we” are vehemently against “them.”

Scripture: Deuteronomy 6.1-9 and Leviticus 19.18" Jacqui Lewis

Question & Answer   Q: By Geoff It strikes me that the God of the Bible, and most religions, is a changeable God; angry,

Whenever we are engaging difficult issues in a complex and multicultural world, vocabulary and language can either help us understand one another — even in our disagreement — or fail us, and add to misunderstandings. When it comes to the issue of “re-imagining” policing or “defunding” police forces, language is failing us.

SCRIPTURE Zechariah 8.1–8

We're delighted to announce that the recordings from our June 17th and June 18th Anti-Racism Workshop are now available for purchase. To honor what you all paid to attend in person, and to encourage folks to join future classes in real time, we've priced both classes together for $25, and made each individual class available for $15.

Sermon with Rev. Jacqui Lewis, Middle Church, March 15, 2020

Sermon: "Proof of Life" SCRIPTURE Ezekiel 37.1-14 With Rev. Jacqueline Lewis, Jacqui Lewis

Why do some progressive Christians seem to ignore what the Bible says on gender, race and sexuality?

Thurber Lectures Thurber Conversation & Guest Preacher — Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis at The American Church in Paris

Wow! To me the events of the last 24 hours feel like The Empire Strikes Back. It feels like evil is kicking our butts, defying the dream of democracy.

“At the center of the Christmas story is hope…hope which comes to us in the form of a vulnerable, poor baby. A child, not a king, changes the world. God appears to us as a marginalized, Afro-Semitic, Jewish child from Nazareth in Palestine. A child who grows up to teach us to welcome the stranger. How would our world be different if we loved our neighbors as ourselves?” asks the Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis, senior minister of Middle Collegiate Church.

Most congregational leaders find it difficult to resist the dominant cultural expectation that different cultural and ethnic groups should stick to themselves–especially when it comes to church.

How do churches build immunity from racial and ethnic tensions that threaten to divide rather than unite congregations? Jacqui Lewis and John Janka believe that the answer lies in the development of multiracial, multicultural communities of faith.