A little Episcopal church on Martha's Vineyard flipped the anti-immigrant scripts of Governor Abbott and Governor DeSantis by embracing, with open doors

When will we ever learn? It is time to get serious about studying current events and the history that has led up to them. So that we don't make the mistakes we made in Afghanistan - and Iraq and Central America and Vietnam - ever again.

This week is Canada Day and July 4, two celebrations of national life in North America. Both holidays are particularly complicated - even painful - this year as citizens in both Canada and the United States struggle with legacies of colonialism and racism in history and our political lives.

The critical first step in harnessing the power of intersectionality is to convince activists of all stripes it’s in their best interest to move forward together. When this happens on a grand scale, the synergy possible will be extraordinary.

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.

One of the struggles many millennials have with organized religion in general is the inability of the older generations to adapt, change, or entertain new ideas and new ways of thinking. This is an issue each generation bumps up against, but this generation and this subject don’t seem to be finding a middle ground.

We have a very difficult time admitting it. But in order to be healthy and whole and to become the people we want to be (and think we are), it is necessary to come to terms with this. The truth will set us free.

Have you ever paused to consider that dialogue between people of different Christian and non-Christian religious traditions is actually a way to respect life itself?

Did you watch Tuesday night’s Democratic debate? The race to the White House for Democrats is an exhausting one, and I’m simply watching the battle on television. 

Last week, a CNN editor reached out to me and asked if I would write a piece for them regarding the crowd at President Trump’s rally in Greenville, North Carolina, that shouted “Send her back!” in response to his criticism of four Congresswomen. The editor wanted me to reflect on how Christians could justify chanting such a thing. 

The treatment of “otherness” I experienced from my years of being bussed, I learned had less to do with the people targeted, like myself, and everything to do with the group in power.

Christianity appears impossible if we focus on the admonitions in the New Testament that Jesus gave his followers. Love your enemies? Good luck with that. Turn the other cheek? Ouch. If a creditor demands your coat, give him your cloak as well? That means you’ll be left naked. If a man lusts after a woman who is not his wife, he’s an adulterer. No heterosexual male can pretend to meet that standard. And the list goes on – culminating in Jesus’ demand that we be perfect, as God is perfect. Nobody can fully follow his marching orders.

When Paul dictated a paean to love in his message to Corinth, he was not thinking of wedding ceremonies; rather, he was imploring the community to overcome internal conflict.

In much the same way, undocumented immigrants should not be called “illegals” nor should asylum seekers be said to be “sneaking in.” These terms paint a misleading picture—no doubt to discredit and reduce sympathy for these people. However, spreading a misleading testimony about others is a violation of one of the 10 Commandments.

The Samaritan does more than he is asked and goes the extra mile. The Samaritan was obviously busy and had somewhere to be, but he still made arrangements for his absence. Hopefully, he also reflected on why the man was injured in the first place and would raise his voice in public so that the road to Jericho could become a safer place in the future.

The Parliament of the World's Religions is proud to distribute It's About Time, a weekly podcast produced in partnership with our allies at Religica.org and Seattle University.

One of the most common arguments I hear against "social justice" is this: Many Christians believe the Gospel calls us to get personally involved in doing charity. They argue that we shouldn't work to improve economic and political systems because that would be outsourcing our Christian responsibilities to a third party, such as the government. For example, they would say Jesus calls us to personally feed the hungry (Matthew 25:31-46), not to pay taxes so that the government can do that for us.

Monday, December 10th marks the 50th anniversary of Thomas Merton’s death—which has now been confirmed as a martyr’s death by the recent solid and important investigative study, The Martyrdom of Thomas Merton by Hugh Turley and David Marin (as well as by my own encounters over the years with three CIA agents who were in Southeast Asia at the time).

My family and I participated in an interfaith prayer and march for immigrant families last night.I had some fear when we started out. Were we putting ourselves at risk? What if some random people saw the march and decided to get violent? Events like this are seldom dangerous as they are in fact protected speech in the Constitution. However, tensions are building in this country and threats are rapidly becoming much more common. It's worth pondering whether the rules still apply anymore.

  A Christian IS an asylum-seeker. All of us. Each of us. By definition. As refugees, don't we need to flee from the

Imagine a person praying at bedtime. He is confused. Unsure of what to do in life. What are his next steps, he wonders? He prays fervently to God for direction. Amazingly enough, God answers! Love God Love one another

Since the end of the Cold War, there has been a consensus among the political and media mainstream that “There Is No Alternative” to Capitalism, particularly the form of capitalism one finds in the context of globalization. “The Free Market”, it is said, will solve all our problems, and become the organizing principle the world over. The conflation of Capitalism and freedom itself has muted any debate that would suggest otherwise. At the same time, recent economic crises coupled with a growing clarity that unlimited growth is destroying the biosphere may suggest that the Capitalist era is coming to an end.

  I usually like to have things all figured out before I do something. I don't support charities without researching them nor vote

Those who believe there is a right and wrong time and place to protest injustices are those whose privilege keeps them from the injustices. Those who with Rev. Dr. M.L. King, Jr., live by the principle that the right time to do the right thing is now, privileged or not, remind us of the immorality of acquiescence, apathy, indifference, denial, negligence, and procrastination in confronting injustice and evil.

Every day at my job, I witness and celebrate America's religious freedom in action. Through our Office of Religious Life, over 70 religious clubs from all the world's faiths, including a secular humanist club, practice their traditions in harmony with each other. They compete with each other openly in the "marketplace" of ideas and practices on campus, with respect for each other and gratitude for the liberty they all enjoy. None of them complain to us that they are in any way oppressed or stifled. We're a private campus, so we could impose all sorts of restrictions on them that would not be possible in the wider public sphere. But they have all the rights they'd have at a publicly-owned university, as well as many extra benefits for all of them - without any one faith tradition getting special privileges. What happens at the University Religious Center at USC is what real religious freedom looks like in America, and it's a beautiful thing.

I often hear the retort "we're a nation of laws." Usually, it is given by someone justifying the exclusion of immigrants and a lack of compassion for their very difficult, often mind-numbingly horrific circumstances. But what these folks probably don't realize is that they are saying more about who they are than about immigrants. When you say "we're a nation of laws," you are setting a standard for yourself--and a good one.

A denomination not known for controversy is taking stances on issues such as assault weapons, universal health care and President Donald Trump's border wall. The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) adopted a declaration during a meeting of the denominations leaders in St. Louis to stake out positions on several social issues, leaving it up to the church's 10,000 congregations and 1.7 million members to decide whether to stand behind the declaration.

What if I simply do my job, even if it requires abhorrent treatment of asylum-seekers and their children, because I am told that law or a new policy requires it. What if I make statements to the press or in court that I know are false because superiors have ordered me to do it? What if I am near retirement and stand to lose my pension by refusing to knowingly traumatize children. Choosing to follow Jesus by refusing to participate in acts of persecution calls for extraordinary heroism in Trump’s America.

What happens when the discernment of one citizen’s religious beliefs are deemed to be discriminatory; infringing upon the civil liberties and rights of another citizen? In fact, what constitutes any set of beliefs as “religious,” with the constitutional protections accorded it?

When patriotism is narrowly defined, as it is today, it can only be accepted and exhibited within the constraints of its own intolerance, and narrow worldview, like Trump’s travel ban (a.ka. Muslim Ban), upheld last week by SCOTUS in a 5-4 decision.