Corporate media and political parties try to reduce the election process into identity politics which has more to do with a beauty contest or a horse race than it does a deliberative choice of policies and values.

If a woman is denied the right to choose for herself whether or not to complete a pregnancy, in what sense can she, or any of us, claim rights of any kind? 

Christians have taken it upon themselves to spread spiritual literacy by sending missionaries to the far reaches of the planet. However, refocusing on promoting educational literacy within our own nation would be to our next generation’s benefit.

During the early 1980’s, when AIDS was first discovered, the Regan administration not only did virtually nothing in response, but when asked about it in press briefings, the response was laughter and gay bashing jokes.

“Trans lives are real lives. Trans deaths are real deaths. God works through other people. Maybe you can be those other people.” We are those other people.

The poor of the planet stare us in the face. Disparity of wealth, in our country and elsewhere, is an outrage that cannot be endured. The numbers are literally unbelievable. The earth provides, but greed monopolizes the table, a select few taking it all while the many stare and starve.

The Parliament of the World’s Religions is thrilled to announce the launch of the Climate Commitments Project. This web-based resource is the virtual face of the Climate Commitments Project, our effort to coordinate and strengthen interfaith and faith-based climate action campaigns.

When you reside at the intersections of multiple identities, anniversaries of your civil rights struggles can be both bitter and sweet. And, May 17th was a reminder.

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.

In the horrible crucible of the Civil War and the Indian Wars, Walt Whitman, in the Leaves of Grass, attempted to describe American greatness, not in our legislatures or executives, but in the inherent goodness of individual Americans. Many of us have lately been humiliated by the juvenile tweets of our chief executive and the morally bankrupt race in several southern states to take away women’s rights, but, as Frankel said, no one can take away from us our ability to decide how we will react to what they do. We get to choose who we are and to reject being defined by the racism, sexism, misogyny, classism, and xenophobia of our current political environment.

    Boston Declaration, condemning the abuse of the Christian faith by many conservatives today, was just written, signed and released by over 300 hundred Christian theologians attending the American Academy of Religion and the Society of …

Nearly a century has passed since the Equal Rights Amendment was first proposed. Every other western democracy’s constitution includes a statement regarding gender equality but in the USA, we still need one more state to approve this long over due change. Women still earn significantly less than men and women of color earn even less. Sure, get your mom and card and flowers for Mothers’ Day but realize this: what she really wants is equal rights!

To call these “end times” is hardly hyperbolic. We are in trouble and the signs are everywhere: extreme political divisions; xenophobic violence; enormous wealth inequity; poverty and homelessness; sexism and ageism; arms buildups and unending wars; and, most frightening of all, escalating climate disruption.

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.

The Green New Deal proposes a set of goals that enumerates the changes necessary to simultaneously save our environment while transforming our economic system. We have already started the 6th period of mass extinction in earth’s history and to avoid a repeat of “the Great Dying” of 250 million years ago, the changes recommended in the Green New Deal are not radical, they are, realistically, necessary.

Why do we seem inherently unable to be more responsive to the world’s needs; where instead we seem instinctually inclined to put ourselves and our own needs ahead of everything and everyone else? What might we do to be less inclined to reflect what seems to be so much a part of our human nature? If there is anything akin to a sacred spark within us, with the example of Jesus’ own way of the cross?

Inspired by a couplet written by the Greek poet, Dinos Christianopoulos, the rock group, Violet and the Undercurrents, wrote a song entitled “They Tried to Bury Us,” and Dr. Ray based an interactive Easter sermon on the music of Violet and the Undercurrents to produce a sermon about a revolutionary way to think about resurrection. Violet and the Undercurrents performed life in this service but we used their YouTube versions of their songs because of the quality of their professional recording.

The high holy holidays of Passover and Easter are fast approaching and Ramadan is in May. Attacks, however, on places of worship are becoming too frequent in this global climate of intolerance. As a worshiper, I need our president to make us safe.