The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, will preside and preach at a major Service of Repentance, Healing and Reconciliation at Trinity, Asheville, NC.
A poor BLACK woman on public assistance is being jailed for sending her kids to the rich white school. …. It’s now questionable whether the teaching degree she’s been working towards will be allowed because she now has a felony charge against her. A family’s life is in virtual ruins because of this situation.
You don’t have to agree with everything Stephen Steinberg writes to find plenty to engage with:
Martin Luther King gave his last Sunday sermon at Washington National Cathedral on March 31, 1968. Some of that sermon is reproduced below, but we
“Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, Nichols says King told her, was showing the nation a universe where ‘for the first time, we [African-Americans] are being seen the world over … as we should be seen’. And ‘you have created a character’ that is critical to that, he said.”
Nathan A. Scott, Jr. died, four years ago this December, in Charlottesville, Va. He was one of the most significant Christian commentators on contemporary culture of the second half of the twentieth century and merits a place in the Episcopal Church’s calendar of saints.
Preaching on the difficult sayings of Jesus is like playing with fire. True, fire is quite useful. It warms us, cooks our food, and, for good or ill, liberates much of the energy that powers our civilization. Fire also cleanses, purifies, and refines. But fire is incredibly dangerous and destructive. If you play with fire, so the saying goes, you’re gonna get burned.
Janani Luwum, the martyred Archbishop of Uganda (feast day, Feb. 17), was recently added to our liturgical calendar. He denounced the brutality of Idi Amin, Uganda’s dictator, and asserted the right of the church to promote justice and protect the oppressed. Summoned to the presidential palace, Luwum went boldly, declaring “I can see the hand of God in this.”
Fifty years ago, the lunch counter sit-ins began in Greensboro, N. C. Writing in the Virginian-Pilot, Denise Watson Batts describes how the movement quickly spead to Virginia, where 17-year-old Ed Rodman, now an Episcopal priest and professor at Episcopal Divinity School, found himself at the center of the storm.
The belief that we do not see the color of the other person rests on a profound misunderstanding about how our minds work and perversely limits our ability to discuss prejudice honestly.