Jeffrey Munroe talks about ‘Telling Secrets in the Dark’—and finds a new role model in coping with grief

February 4, 2024 by

Jeffrey Munroe speaks to a crowd of more than 100 who filled a gathering space at Third Reformed Church in Holland, Michigan.

Editor’s Note: Even before Jeffrey Munroe’s book, Telling Stories in the Dark, launched nationally on January 30, he used some early pre-release copies of his book to host discussion groups. As it turned ut, many people were eager to talk about Jeffrey’s life-affirming message of finding resilience and hope—even in the face of deep and sometimes long-lasting trauma. After one such discussion, Jeffrey told us about a surprising, spontaneous response from a man whose story illustrates why such a book is needed.

We asked Jeffrey to write up that experience for us.
And here is that story …

By JEFFREY MUNROE
Author of Telling Stories in the Dark

HOLLAND, Michigan—In a discussion with early readers of my book, Telling Stories in the Dark, I asked if anyone could remember a time when they asked God why something painful had happened to them.

The man who volunteered to share was in his 90s.

“I had a baby brother who died,” he said with deep feeling. “I had been an only child and so wanted a brother. I remember riding in our car on the way to his funeral and sobbing out, ‘Why, God, why?’ ”

That experience was as vivid as the day it unfolded, he said. “In fact, I can take you to the exact place where this happened—it’s only a few miles from here.”

Our group sat in silence for a few moments, taking in his vivid recollection of this painful event.

Eventually, I asked, “How long ago was this?”

He did some math in his head and said, “88 years.”

After a pause, he said, “I tried to talk about it once—in this very room—about 30 years ago and couldn’t even get the words out.”

The conventional wisdom following a loss is that you are allowed a period of grief—at the most about 12 months, people seem to think—and then it’s time to get over it and move on with your life.

That is cruel.

Are we supposed to suppress our feelings and pretend our loved ones did not exist?

A while ago I came across this advice in a book I was reading, “You must let go of your grief. So far as it is possible, we must walk away from painful and destructive feelings. Simply that. Walk away.”

I reached for a pen and wrote “NO!!!” in large letters in the margin. I could not disagree more.

Grief is not a destructive feeling. It is not pathological. It is not a sign of weakness. It is not something to walk away from. It is something to embrace.

Opening ourselves to love means opening ourselves to grief.

As the philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff put it to me in an interview for Telling Stories in the Dark, “If my child was worth loving when alive, he is worth grieving over when dead.”

Wolterstorff told me Western culture is fixated on “disowning grief.” The goal of grieving is not to get over it or put it behind you. The goal is to own it and take it into your being. Sure, with the passing of time the intensity of feelings may soften, but the wound created by loss never completely closes.

People sometimes speak of being “triggered,” while others react skeptically, feeling this indicates fragility. I am sympathetic to those who experience being triggered. All it may take is a few measures of music, a familiar scent, or a scene from a movie to transport you someplace else. Suddenly, the pain is acute.

There is nothing wrong with honoring those feelings.

What is wrong, and ultimately hurtful, is to pretend your feelings don’t exist.

How long will we live with loss and lament?

In the case of my friend, it’s been 88 years.

Now, I look to him as a role model.

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Care to learn more?

‘When we tell our stories, others find their own healing and hope’

Click the cover to visit the book’s Amazon page.

Because so many people are asking us about this new book, we asked early readers what questions they hope interviewers will ask Jeff as he embarks on a series of public outreach events. Here is that Q-and-A in which Jeff answers many of those questions.

And, please, don’t simply take our word for it about the value of this book: We also are pleased to share a link with our ReadTheSpirit readers this week to veteran journalist Bill Tammeus’s review of Jeff’s book in which Bill calls this “an enormously helpful book.” Bill headlined his review: Confronting trauma not with explanations but with love

Want to read a sample? This is the first book in our new Reformed Journal Books imprint and that online magazine—The Reformed Journal—has published their own column heralding the book’s official publication-date this week. The Journal editors chose to provide a brief excerpt from Jeff’s book, headlined: The Thing with Feathers, which was Emily Dickinson’s famous description of “hope.”

Greg Garrett amplifies James Baldwin’s prophetic call from ‘Go Tell It on the Mountain’ to ‘The Welcome Table’

January 14, 2024 by

Click on this cover to visit the book’s Kindle and paperback page on Amazon.

‘Any Myth that Denies a Person’s Humanity Has to be Excavated and Repented’

By DAVID CRUMM
Editor of ReadTheSpirit magazine

The author and educator Greg Garrett has been teaching the works of James Baldwin for many years in his courses at Baylor—and it took those decades of reflection and dialogue with students before Greg could finally give birth to his newest book, The Gospel According to James Baldwin.

One milestone that helped Greg was a major grant from the Baugh Foundation to study how American media has shaped popular racial attitudes—what Greg calls “racial mythologies.” The foundation’s financial support helped to fuel his wide-ranging research on related issues in the U.S. and around the world.

“Racial mythologies have been deeply embedded in American life, from film to legal codes to theology to popular and material culture,” Greg said at the time the Baugh grant was announced. “Any myth that denies a person her or his humanity has to be excavated, examined and repented. So often, we are unconscious of the degree to which those mythologies are operating and even defining us.”

Another milestone that refreshed Greg’s life-long interest in Baldwin’s life and work was the 2017 acquisition of “30 linear feet” of Baldwin’s papers, manuscripts, notes and artifacts by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at The New York Public Library.

“This collection at the Schomburg is incredible!” Greg said in our interview about his Baldwin book. “I want to keep learning about—and from—James Baldwin for the rest of my life. So, looking at these manuscripts—especially those about the play, The Welcome Table, that he was working on at the end of his life—allowed me to see how Baldwin kept working on this idea over time. As an Episcopalian, I believe that some relics are holy and, when I was holding a manuscript of The Welcome Table that included the author’s hand-written corrections—well that’s a holy moment, a holy relic.”

“I have to credit the archives with letting me move the closest to Baldwin that I have felt in my life,” Greg said. “And, that was just one of destinations where I got closer to Baldwin. I start and end this new book with descriptions of trips I made to the same Swiss village where Baldwin went at least three times—and I think I’ve uncovered a fourth visit he made later in his life. Walking the same streets in Switzerland that he walked, I felt a deep connection with him—seeing what he saw and looking out across the same valleys he saw as he wrote there.”

‘The Welcome Table’—A Good Reason to Order This Book

Greg ranks the papers concerning The Welcome Table among the greatest treasures in the Baldwin archive. Baldwin still was working on the play when he died in 1987 at age 63. To Garrett’s knowledge, no one has yet secured the rights to produce a version of that nearly finished draft. And, reading Garrett’s book, perhaps someone will feel moved to do so.

To put it simply: That section in Greg’s book about The Welcome Table is a good reason to buy a copy of his new book, even if you have other works by and about Baldwin on your shelf.

This play, in Garrett’s words, “brought together many of his greatest themes” and “would have been a fitting end to a monumental life. … In most of Baldwin’s work, failures to love sacrificially, failures to love with courage, failures to love in the face of whatever others might say about love, doom characters.” Nevertheless, “even in The Welcome Table, where Baldwin was wrestling with his late-life inclinations about the necessity of love and the irrelevance of labels, we find characters trying to live into the importance of love.”

Greg said, “Throughout his life, he loved the Blues, hymns and spirituals and The Welcome Table connects us all the way back to the era of slavery—and the hope that there is a kingdom we all are working toward.”

Acknowledging the Primacy of Love

In the book itself, Greg writes:

Baldwin had been taught early in his life in the church that we are called to love everybody. “Whoever else did not believe this,” he remembers, “I did.” And, thus, to talk about a faith community—about any community—one has to acknowledge the primacy of love, “our endless connection with, and responsibility for, each other.”

To the end of his life, Baldwin spoke of the concept of the Welcome Table, a place where this brotherhood and sisterhood, this kind of love, this kind of unity, might be possible. The concept comes from a spiritual that was also sung in the civil rights era. Its first verse proclaims, “I’m going to sit at the Welcome Table one of these days.” Perhaps just now, I am alone, hungry, sad, lost. But someday, somewhere, there will be a place where I belong. Where I will be seen and known. Where I will be accepted. Where I will be welcome at the feast alongside all my brothers and sisters. One of these days, I’m going to sit at the Welcome Table.

This was an article of faith for Baldwin. If we did not succumb to fear and hatred, if we did not implode from our own divisions, such a thing was attainable.

What Else Is in This New Book?

If you have read this far, you probably are familiar with Baldwin in some way. Perhaps you were assigned to read his books in school—as Professor Garrett does each year with at least one Baldwin book for his classes at Baylor. Perhaps you enjoyed Barry Jenkins’ Oscar-winning 2018 version of Baldwin’s 1974 novel, If Beale Street Could Talk. Perhaps you are old enough that, like me, you followed Baldwin’s provocative literary and film criticism as it flowed through major American media during his prime.

So, you may be asking: Do I need another Baldwin book?

This column is arguing: You do. But let’s be clear on what Greg is offering here to both individual readers who want to reflect on faith and race and culture in America—and to small groups who may want to engage in that kind of timely discussion in their communities.

What he is not attempting in this new book is another exhaustive biography of Baldwin. If that’s what you are seeking, I can recommend the three volumes of Baldwin’s own works collected by Library of America, since Baldwin publicly explored his own life and wisdom across his published works. In effect, he wrote his own autobiography. If you want a substantial biography of Baldwin by a scholar, I can recommend David Leemings’ 1994 biography of Baldwin that’s more than twice the length of Greg’s book. Or, you might consider Princeton scholar Eddie S. Glaude Jr.’s 2020 Begin Again, which also is a lot longer than Greg’s book.

What Greg Garrett has accomplished is what I would describe as a very compelling “magazine-style overview” of crucial themes that Baldwin was trying to convey across the decades that we had him with us on the planet. In other words, Greg has given us a book that everyday readers can jump into without a lot of background reading—and glean some very timely insights.

In chapters on Culture, Faith, Race, Justice, Identity and New Beginnings, Garrett takes us through the broad sweep of Baldwin’s wisdom about how the world desperately needs to confront our collective, selfish and destructive biases—if we hope to have any chance at reconciliation. And, as Baldwin always emphasized: That sentence contains a huge “if.”

Baldwin never was certain that we could collectively attain what he yearned was possible.

James Baldwin as a Prophet for Our Times

Greg Garrett is not the first writer to refer to Baldwin as prophetic, but he does argue this case in a fresh and persuasive way in this new book.

“This is something he thought about himself,” Greg said in our interview. “At various points in his life, he wrote that he saw himself as a sort of Jeremiah—and I think that’s a perfect characterization of him. I think of that passage as Jeremiah stands at the temple saying to the people: ‘God will not reward your worship and faithfulness until you treat the marginalized with justice.’

“When we encounter Baldwin today, that’s sort of what it feels like: Being there when a Jeremiah calls out to all of us. And Baldwin’s voice still moves people, if we only listen, if we only read. We are now more than 70 years from Go Tell It on the Mountain and 60 years from The Fire Next Time—and, those books still are read and are moving readers toward the kingdom that Baldwin always was seeking. This is not wisdom lost on a dusty library shelf. This is wisdom people still are encountering today and can wind up living every day of their lives as a result.”

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Care to Read More?

GREG GARRETT is a long-time friend and regular visitor in our weekly online magazine. Two other ReadTheSpirit Cover Stories featuring Greg that you may find relevant to this new book on Baldwin are:

From June 2023, headlined: Greg Garrett’s new novel, ‘Bastille Day,’ asks: Can we find spiritual resilience to face the dangers in our world?

From June 2020: Greg Garrett Helps Us Understand Hollywood’s Role in Systemic Racism

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Not Just Black and White, by scholar Anni Reinking, also is a very helpful book focused on the growing number of mixed-race families trying to navigate racial attitudes. Her book is available in Kindle, paperback and hardcover from Amazon as well as other booksellers.

Reinking has spent years as a researcher, scholar and educator. Her roles as mother and researcher come together in this important book. She shares her family’s life in the hope that these stories will foster learning, discussion and new places for reflection and growth.

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PLUS, thousands of Americans now are using volumes from the nearly two dozen produced by Michigan State University School of Journalism’s long-running Bias Busters series. Among the volumes in this award-winning series—prepared with the oversight of blue-ribbon, national panels of experts and scholars—are:

100 Questions & Answers about African Americans

100 Questions & Answers about Hispanics and Latinos

100 Questions & Answers about Arab Americans

And, of course, many, many more.

 

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The Top 10 Stories You Told Us You Enjoyed—and Shared with Friends—in 2023

December 23, 2023 by

‘You’ve got to read this!’

When readers share our stories with others, we know we’re touching lives far and wide.

AS WE DO ON THE LAST MONDAY OF EACH YEAR, we look back across our previous 51 issues and we highlight 10 stories that really got our readers talking in 2023! Please, enjoy this year’s annual Top 10 list—and remember to keep sharing these inspiring and thought-provoking stories with friends as we move into the New Year 2024. Through such sharing, we increase the hope, wisdom and good news that flows across social media and circles our globe.

(And, if you read to the end, you’ll find a bonus story that you won’t want to miss!)

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Click on any of these images to jump to the original stories.

A Call to Remember the Most Vulnerable

On the first day of 2023, we touched on a major theme of our publishing house: The need to spread awareness and encourage compassion for the most vulnerable families living among us. Author Henry Brinton contributed our New Year’s Day 2023 column, headlined: Marking the Centennial of the Rosewood Massacre: Remembering our past prepares us to build a healthier future. 

After Henry’s story appeared, we received an ongoing series of emails from readers who appreciated knowing about this important centennial observance. We also heard from a number of pastors who told us they followed up by highlighting the Rosewood centennial for their congregations either in prayers, in sermons or in columns they wrote for their local newsletters. Thanks, Henry, for starting 2023 with this stirring story!

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And a Call to Resilience in Our Challenging World

Our online magazine also is trying to revive awareness of another valuable, historic story—the resilient and hope-filled life of entrepreneur Roger Babson. Largely forgotten in today’s media culture, Roger Babson once had a global following for his newspaper columns, public lectures and books.

The main reason people remember him today is that the college Babson founded continues to rank No. 1 in the U.S. for entrepreneurial education—and because author Howard Brown’s memoir Shining Brightly adds a fresh spotlight on Babson’s truly unique approach to coping with the world’s many problems. In early 2023—shortly after we published the somber story about the legacy of Rosewood—we published this cheery story about Roger Babson, headlined: Try carrying ‘Hope’ with you, each day—Roger Babson built a ‘Good Cheer Library’ on that principle. Many readers enthusiastically shared that story with friends. The late Mr. Babson surely was smiling down on all of us!

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Healing Wisdom of Gustavo Parajón

And speaking of coping with global challenges, in early 2023 we published a new biography, Healing the World—Gustavo Parajón, Public Health and Peacemaking Pioneer. The story we published at the launch of this inspiring book began with these words:

In an era when a Russian dictator can declare a war that kills thousands—and when angry political factions around the world routinely touch off deadly violence—millions of us are wondering: Is there a better way to live? Indeed, there is: We can look to the life of Gustavo Parajón (1935-2011), a Nicaraguan doctor and pastor who became so well known around the world for his peacemaking efforts that U2’s Bono once disguised himself so that he could quietly slip into a gathering of people listening to one of Parajón’s talks in the UK.

We were especially proud of the way the production of this book brought together peacemakers from Central America, the U.S. and the United Kingdom—who contributed in various ways to creating and promoting this book.

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Reading the Bible with ‘Fresh’ Eyes

The Rev. George A. Mason’s new book The Word Made Fresh landed in our world with a considerable impact—spurred along by George’s tireless work as a now-semi-retired pastor and full-time writer, teacher, media personality and interfaith peace activist.

This “story” of George’s ongoing work unfolded across more than a dozen feature stories, columns, videos and news items that we published in 2023. Here are several examples of the many ways George’s overall “story” touched our readers’ lives:

Clearly, George’s thought-provoking approach to Good News will continue into 2024. While it is obvious that “the Bible” can divide people—George A. Mason continues to preach that the Bible still can bring people together in life-giving ways.

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Dr. David Gushee Shifting Focus

Our publishing house team is proud of our collective work with a wide range of prophetic peacemakers like Gustavo Parajón and George A. Mason—and like our long-time friend and author Dr. David Gushee. Over the past decade, Dr. Gushee has become the leading Christian scholar arguing for the full inclusion of LGBTQ Christians in churches around the world. Then, in 2023, Gushee shifted his focus slightly to take aim at the rising tide of what often is referred to as “Christian Nationalism.” The “story” of Gushee’s activism extends far beyond our publications. Now, Dr. Gushee’s efforts are regularly featured in columns, podcasts and news stories around the world. Here are two of the stories we published in 2023 about his ongoing work:

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A Different Kind of Community

In 2023, our first cozy mystery author, Laura Elizabeth, showed the world that readers love “cozy mysteries” because these novels often focus on entire communities coming together to help solve crises.

Just read some of the dozens of glowing reviews on Laura’s Amazon page to see how personally readers enjoy becoming part of Laura’s island community: “Laura Elizabeth made every character come alive for me. Can’t wait to visit them again in future books. I loved the bookstore and the delightful smell of the pies,” wrote one 5-star reviewer. In fact, some readers actually visited the real-life island on which Laura’s novel is based. One of them writes, “I started reading this in paperback form while staying at Daufuskie Island, SC, at a BnB. I got drawn in so quickly I needed an electronic copy so I wouldn’t have to put the book down.”

Here are several of the many columns, news items and updates we’ve published about Laura’s world in 2023:

From June: Laura Elizabeth’s first cozy mystery, ‘All Is Now Lost,’ finds hope and home on a famous little island in the Atlantic

From July: As Babson College tells us, Laura Elizabeth’s cozy mystery is about much more than suspenseful fun (Yes, like Howard Brown, Laura is a Babson graduate.)

From September: Come to a beautiful island with Laura Elizabeth’s new cozy mystery, ‘All Is Now Lost’

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And, welcoming another community!

A major news story in November was our  collaboration with the popular online magazine The Reformed Journal in establishing a new Reformed Journal Books imprint.  Our headline on that story aptly captures the theme: Our publishing house welcomes Reformed Journal Books, compassionate Christian voices of resilience and hope

As we broke that news, we reported: “To put it simply: This book and this new imprint represent the collective good work of a host of professionals who truly want to share hopeful stories in these troubling times. This is an exciting group of people to get to know through their upcoming books—and who want to actively engage with groups and congregations nationwide.”

In fact, even though Jeffrey’s book does not officially launch until late January 2024, he already is scheduling public appearances, discussion groups and a whole array of outreach with readers. Thanks to everyone who is sharing this news with friends in an ongoing way!

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Spiritual Renewal in the Natural World

Over the past decade, there’s no author we’ve featured in ReadTheSpirit who inspires more reader sharing than Barbara Mahany. We were pleased to feature her again in 2023 in an interview about her new The Book of Nature: The Astonishing Beauty of God’s First Sacred Text.

Barbara’s latest book is truly “remarkable,” because her aim is nothing short of “bedazzlement”—trying to summon all of our senses to a fresh appreciation of, quite literally, the natural world in our own back yards from gardens, trees and birds to wind, snow, dawn, dusk and the stars at night. Down through the millennia, she explains, great writers and spiritual sages have “read” this “book of nature” as a revelatory gift from God.

Here’s a link to that story, headlined: In ‘The Book of Nature,’ Barbara Mahany bedazzles us with the spiritual wonders in our own back yards.

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Steven Charleston’s Native American perspective on saving our planet

Not long after our publishing house was founded in 2007, we began publishing the voices of Native American leaders. Among those landmarks was the 2009 publication of Warren Petoskey’s memoir, Dancing My Dream. Many readers follow our online magazine to find our ongoing coverage of related issues, including: investigations into the legacy of prison-like “Indian boarding schools,” questions about “land acknowledgment,” and reporting on the ongoing efforts of Native American leaders to help us all preserve our planet.

In 2023, we were honored to welcome Steven Charleston twice into the pages of our online magazine. Here are those two stories, which were shared far and wide by our readers this year:

From August: Native American elder Steven Charleston’s ‘Spirit Wheel’ weaves spirituality from ‘common threads of hope and mercy’

From September: In ‘We Survived the End of the World,’ Native American author Steven Charleston urges readers to become prophets of hope

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And, finally: ‘Excelsior!’

One of the great pleasures as editor of this online magazine each year is that I occasionally collaborate on contributions from writers on stories that touch my own life in powerful ways. That certainly was true in February 2023, when best-selling author and Day1 radio host Peter Wallace sent me his story about Marvel Comics’ Stan Lee.

The story was headlined: ‘Excelsior!’ (Higher!) The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee’s Dream of a New Kind of Christian Comics. Both Peter and I are lifelong fans of comic books and comic strips—which is why one of our publishing house’s gems is a collection of anti-bullying comics we produce, called Bullying Is No Laughing Matter. 

In the weeks after we published Peter Wallace’s column about Stan Lee, I heard from comic fans nationwide who were surprised that Lee ever considered producing a line of Christian comics.

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BONUS: A delicious story that continues to circle our world

To demonstrate the ongoing positive power of sharing such Good News, we only have to summon the example of a 2020 story written by two of our longtime friends: Martin Davis and Elisa Di Benedetto. The year their story about family traditions involving minestrone soup was first published, it ranked as one of the Top 10 with our readers.

And that story continues to be shared!

Here’s our original version in 2020: Across Thousands of Miles, Friends Still Connect to Feed Our Families and Our World

And here is the version that appeared in The Advance online newspaper on December 23, 2023: Warm Bellies, Warm Hearts, Warm Season

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May we all continue to do good in the New Year 2024!

So, now, please take a moment to share one of these stories with friends.

You’ve just done so?

Then, blessings on you for that simple, powerful mitzvah!

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Repairing our World, tikkun olam: What kind of world are we trying to restore? Two Christian leaders speak out.

September 24, 2023 by

Georgia-based best-selling Christian author David Gushee (above) is one of a number of Christian leaders who are warning about the rise of Christian Nationalism as America approaches the election year 2024. You can see some of Gushee’s recent podcasts below.

George A. Mason and David Gushee Speak Out Against Extremism and Christian Nationalism

By DAVID CRUMM
Editor of ReadTheSpirit magazine

Tikkun Olam, literally “repairing the world” in English, has been described by Rabbi Jill Jacobs as “the establishment of Godly qualities throughout the world” and by Jewish scholar David Schatz as the idea that we “bear responsibility not only for their own moral, spiritual, and material welfare, but also for the welfare of society at large.”

Our online magazine has published thousands of columns since our founding in 2007, calling on people to build healthy communities that embrace the world’s cultural and religious diversity.

This particular Cover Story in our weekly magazine appears on Yom Kippur, often called the holiest day in the Jewish year. This year, the rising tide of hate speech and hateful violence—including record rates of antisemitism as documented by the ADL—is a major concern in Jewish congregations nationwide. This Cover Story is an effort to remind all of our readers that our Jewish neighbors are not alone in urging Americans to recognize the dangers of escalating violence and to confront extremism.

This autumn, we are hearing from major Christian leaders who are allies in this effort—especially speaking out against the specific threat they refer to as “Christian Nationalism.”

George Mason: ‘Welcoming every faith to offer its unique gifts’

In his latest email-newsletter to his readers nationwide, George A. Mason (author of the new The World Made Fresh) zeroed in on the threat of Christian Nationalism in nations including the U.S. as well as Russia, where the Russian Orthodox Church fully supports attacks on Ukraine.

Mason wrote, in part:

Every religion thinks it is special. Language like “divine election” and “chosen people” leads devotees to feel beloved. And as long as they live and worship only with one another, that has a cohesive effect of giving followers strong identity. But when people of other religions begin to inhabit the same geographic and political space, it threatens the psychic space of those who think themselves the most special. …

Religious nationalism is a growing existential challenge in our world today. Hungary, Russia, and the United States are dealing with surging versions of Christian nationalism. … The psychological woundedness of fearing that one’s religion is no longer special if it is not privileged leads inevitably to violence.

The Catholic global theologian, Hans Küng, said: “There will be no peace among the nations without peace among the religions. There will be no peace among the religions without dialogue among the religions.” We must learn to live together freely and respectfully across our religious differences.

This is why Rabbi Nancy Kasten and I conceived of Faith Commons. We believe that every religion has something to contribute to God’s healing work in the world.

Mason’s message to his readers expanded on this theme to address religious nationalism in other nations as well, including the surge in Hindu nationalism in India and Islamic nationalism in a number of predominantly Muslim nations. Overall, Mason urged his readers to work toward a world in which “every faith can offer its unique gifts for the good of us all.”

Unfortunately, millions of people around the world are missing that message. You can learn more about George’s work by visiting his Faith Commons website—and by ordering a copy of his new book, The Word Made Fresh.

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David Gushee: Confronting ‘the toxicity that is with us now’

In this most recent video, Gushee speaks with scholar and podcaster Brad Onishi about these issues.

This year, Gushee is circling the world with his own prophetic message through videos and in-person talks. He explains that “Christian Nationalism” has become “the leading category being used in scholarship and in public discussion to describe these disturbing political trends.” But he also broadens his warnings about these dangers by calling them “authoritarian reactionary Christianity,” which we see popping up especially in Russia where the Orthodox church has completely aligned itself with Vladimir Putin and his war in Ukraine. Around the world, Gushee argues, there is something fundamentally wrong with many groups waving Christian banners as they try to seize power, often overlooking or actively encouraging violence.

Now, the dangers of such Christian extremism are so dire in America that—as the 2024 election year looms—Gushee has a new book coming out this autumn, called: Defending Democracy from Its Christian Enemies. And, he’s also posting videos, like the one below, trying to raise awareness of these dangers.

(Coming soon: Watch this online magazine in coming weeks for more about Gushee’s new book and ongoing efforts to confront extremism.)

Featured in this video are …

Gushee is the best-selling author of many books about Christian ethics, including Changing Our Mind and Introducing Christian Ethics. You can learn more about Gushee via his website. 

His discussion partner in this newest video, Bradley Onishi, is a scholar whose research, writing and teaching focuses on Christian Nationalism, the history of Evangelicalism, race and racism in America. He has taught at the Graduate Theological Union at UC Berkeley, Rhodes College, Skidmore College, Central Michigan University and the University of San Francisco. You can learn more about Onishi via his website.

WANT TO SEE MORE? THIS VIDEO CONVERSATION WITH ONISHI is just one part of a series of videos David Gushee is posting to his YouTube channel to highlight these issues. If you visit this YouTube page, you’ll find this Onishi conversation as well as three other videos, as of September 25, 2023, all focused on confronting extremism and Christian Nationalism.

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Care to read more?

Here are some other recent headlines about these issues

FROM PEW RESEARCH: In their own words—How Americans describe ‘Christian Nationalism’

ALSO FROM PEW: Views of the U.S. as a ‘Christian nation’ and opinions about ‘Christian nationalism’

TIME MAGAZINE: Why a Group of Christians Is Fighting the Growing Threat of Christian Nationalism

ALSO FROM TIME: The Roots of Christian Nationalism Go Back Further Than You Think

FROM RELIGION NEWS SERVICE: Calvinist activist warns that white nationalism is invading Reformed churches

FROM SOJOURNERS: 6 warning signs of Christian Nationalism in US politics

FROM BILL McKIBBEN in THE NEW YORKER: A Christian’s thoughts on the problem of Christian Nationalism

ALSO FROM THE NEW YORKER: How Christian is Christian Nationalism?

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES: Whose version of Christian Nationalism will win in 2024?

FROM BAPTIST NEWS GLOBAL: Christian Nationalism—How evangelical Christianity became a political religion

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A Window into Love and Loss: From the branches of a lone pine hung an old swing.

September 11, 2023 by

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Memory is a myserteous window that often opens unexpected vistas from our past. That’s what author and leadership coach Larry Buxton discovered when the leader of a writing class he was taking at Chautauqua this year asked participants to begin writing from the prompt of a single image. In Larry’s case it was a tree. Please enjoy Larry’s inspiring journey into his memories of family, love and loss. This story may prompt you to begin writing about some of your own family memories. So, please share this story with friends via social media or email. Who knows? You may discover a circle of friends reliving memories with you.

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By LARRY BUXTON
Author of 30 Days with King David: On Leadership

In the shadows of the side yard of my house stood a single tall pine. From it hung, for some mysterious reason, a child’s delight—a swing. It was a simple swing, a thick board with two holes at each end and a bristly rope that soared up to the lowest sturdy branch. The length of the ropes made for an unusually long arc and high pitch.

That side yard was not only shady but also long and narrow. I guess the house hadn’t been centered exactly on the lot, because the yard on the other side was spacious and wide, open enough that Dad could stride across it, step easily through the bushes, and talk with our neighbor about, I don’t know, lawn mowers and grass seed.

But the narrow side had, as its only distinguishing feature, the pine tree with the empty swing. It rose past my younger brother Craig’s upstairs bedroom window, where he could see the knotted ropes securing the thick board below.

That swing remained a mystery to me all of my childhood. I don’t know who put it there or how. Maybe Dad had paid one of the construction workers to swing his crane over a few yards and attach the rope. Dad never mentioned it or asked about it. He never pushed me on the swing, nor my brothers either. While I swung there a few times, that strip of yard wasn’t an inviting place for a swarm of boys to play. So the swing stayed empty and unused for all of my young life.

Only Craig was privy to seeing it on a regular basis.

How was it, I wonder now, that I could spend a formative fourteen years oblivious to that silent presence outside the window? Even more perplexing, how was it I was equally oblivious to the drama of the silent presence inside the same window?

Craig spent hours in that room with the door closed. He hibernated there from stepping off the school bus to being called for dinner. When he opened the door, sometimes the cat would bolt out mewling and run down the stairs. After dinner, again behind the door, we’d hear muffled drums and fuzz-tone guitars, occasional thuds, once or twice a whiff of cigarette smoke.

I was barely a teenager when Craig’s schedule added weekly visits to “the doctor.” When my older brother and I asked what was going on, we learned a new word: “confidentiality.” We heard vague explanations like, “He helps Craig make better decisions.”

We’d ask Craig, who simply shot back, “I don’t want to talk about it.” So, like the silent pine and unused swing outside his window, he too remained a mystery.

The following year Craig was enrolled in a private school in Pennsylvania. “He can get better help there,” we were told, and “He’ll have teachers who can give him more attention.” Now his bedroom stayed open because no one was ever in it. This was the case for two years.

The summer I graduated high school, I took a camp job two hours away, and Craig returned home. He attended three local private schools in four years, never in dramatic trouble but repeatedly not invited back for the following year. We spoke only rarely and briefly.

I learned that while he was in his senior year of high school he’d been invited to an evangelical church. He liked it. He kept going, and a few weeks later he had a “conversion experience.” While we were all somewhat skeptical, over time there were fewer arguments at home, fewer locked doors, and higher marks at school. He got a part-time job and continued to attend his church. In September he went off to college.

Over the decades that ensued, Craig finished college and pinged from job to job—funeral home assistant, car salesman, a Time-Life operator who was standing by to take your call. He got into seminary, then got ordained, and bounced from one small church to another. He was good at only short-term relationships, so he became, perhaps inevitably, a hospice chaplain.

Whether I reached out frequently or sporadically, Craig always kept his distance. He lived alone, rarely answered his phone (but emailed torrents of jokes and comics), and held his daily activities close to his chest.

Late last winter Craig died unexpectedly of a heart attack. We planned for a small funeral, but when the day came, I was taken aback at the turnout. The church ran out of bulletins. The sanctuary was packed with people of different races and ages and economic conditions, some in their Sunday finest and some in work clothes. One after another, man or woman would stand to tell a story of Craig’s kindness or his generosity, a welcome prison visit or a bedside prayer.

One man who served as a health care aide to an elderly church member stood to say, “Every time Craig visited Miss Ellen, he always spoke to me—by name—like I was somebody important.”

For 90 minutes the church chuckled in recognition, elbowed its neighbors, and dabbed its eyes.

I left the church pondering the mystery of a brother I had known—and not known. How he spent his days, and how all these people came to know and love him, would forever remain in the shade for me. I was able to greet neighbors through the bushes much more easily, but he had an ability to walk in the narrower, even shadier, margins of life.

Unlike the swing, I doubt Craig ever soared high and free. Rather, the solitary pine outside his window modeled how he could send deep roots into God and thrive, and how, from an outstretched arm, he could extend a gift he could never enjoy, but always offer.

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At a wedding reception in 2019, from left: brothers Larry, Craig and Brian Buxton.

Care to read more?

Larry Buxton works as a consultant with a wide range of leaders. Click on this cover to visit his book’s Amazon page.


VISIT LARRY: You’ll find lots of inspiring and thought-provoking videos and columns at his website, simply LarryBuxton.com

ORDER HIS BOOK: 30 Days with King David: On Leadership is available on Amazon in Kindle, hardcover and paperback.

Native American elder Steven Charleston’s ‘Spirit Wheel’ weaves spirituality from ‘common threads of hope and mercy’

August 28, 2023 by

 

Remembering Our Earth,
Even in a Wooden Bowl

What is spiritual is what is most ordinary,
The common threads of hope and mercy
The things we know best
Because we have lived them all
So I chant the turn of another day,
Spinning grace into the world
Spinning the four directions until they turn like a wheel.
from the opening page of Spirit Wheel—Meditations from an Indigenous Elder

By DAVID CRUMM
Editor of ReadTheSpirit magazine

Click the cover to visit the book’s Amazon page.

If you remember anything from this profile of the venerable Native American religious leader Steven Charleston and his new book, Spirit Wheel, remember two images:

A hand reaching out to feel a mound of soft brown earth in a wooden bowl

And an old man with long white hair sweeping the floor at dawn.

“These are simple things,” Steven Charleston told me in a Zoom conversation about his new book of meditations. “My life is very, very simple now. I don’t travel and give talks or do workshops anymore. I guess you’d call me sort of a contemplative—and this is by choice, much of it by virtue of my family.”

Among Native American spiritual leaders, Steven Charleston is truly a noble elder, widely respected for his work over many years. Like two thirds of the millions of Native Americans living today, Charleston is Christian by choice. He’s part of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma with his family roots in the Trail of Tears. He graduated from the Episcopal Divinity School in Massachusetts in the 1970s and became such a highly respected leader in the Episcopal church that he served in the 1990s as the Bishop of Alaska. He has worked on bridge building efforts across the worldwide Anglican Communion. Among his dozen earlier books, he is especially noted for a pair of 2015 books, The Four Vision Quests of Jesus, and a collaborative volume by 10 Native leaders writing on the theme: Coming Full Circle—Constructing Native Christian Theology.

He’s a spiritual leader, teacher and author who has touched thousands of lives around the world.

‘The Path My Ancestors Followed’

But, today, you might envision Steven Charleston in his Oklahoma home sweeping the floor. A

Steven Charleston. (Photo provided by the author for this story.)

“I follow a traditional way of life now—and part of that is because of the importance of my family,” Charleston told me. “My father will be 100 years old in December. My mother will be 97 and I am the sole survivor to help them. I spend much of my day helping them and helping my wife, who has MS and also just got through a struggle with cancer. So don’t think of me as way off on some remote mountain top in some romantic vision of a spiritual leader. Think of me washing dishes, sweeping floors, doing laundry and taking care of my family. This is the path that I am on. This is a very important path. It’s less visionary than people might imagine, but it’s the path my ancestors followed—and it’s what I will continue to do.”

And what about the image of a small pile of earth in a wooden bowl?

Following Native tradition, Charleston prefers to pray and meditate “outdoors standing two feet on the earth so that I am reconnected,” but he also is aware that many men and women are not mobile enough to go outdoors or, even if they can go outside, they may not be able to stand. So a work-around he suggests is taking some soil—some earth—and placing it in a bowl so that you can reach out and touch the earth as you pray.

“Of course, I prefer to go outside and stand on the earth as I pray, so I am connected to the earth,” he said. “But I also am very much aware of all those who cannot take even those steps. So, just a small bowl of earth, natural earth, can remind us of the source and substance we come from. Just placing your hand on that earth can be a connection with our source. It may sound like a small affectation—this little bowl of earth—but it can be a very profound reminder of our connection to the earth.”

The Balance of ‘Social Determinants of Health’

In our conversation, I told Charleston that I was deeply moved by his expressions of Native American spirituality, because they echo so many of the other authors we have published over the years. That is especially true in books like Now What? The Gifts and Challenges of Aging that explore the full range of the Social Determinants of Health. That phrase refers to a growing body of global public-health research that illustrates how health and wellbeing are the result of far more than access to medicine and medical treatments. Health and wellbeing begin with simple, daily, human connection.

As I explained the harmony I hear between his teachings—and Native wisdom in general—and the emerging Social Determinants of Health, Charleston nodded in agreement across our Zoom screen.

“Thank you for sharing it in that way,” he said, “because it helps people who may be new to Native American spiritual thought to see how important and constructive Native tradition can be. There are things that Native people have been saying for centuries that everyone is now realizing are are very helpful at this time. This wisdom speaks directly to our culture and society and all of the things with which we are struggling around the world. As Native people, we believe that, embedded within us, is this ancient wisdom that not only speaks about interpersonal relationships with each other but also our relationship to the earth—and the need for dramatic efforts we must make to try to restore our balance.”

Too often, men and women seeking inspiration and renewal from Native sources focus on the more spectacular sights and sounds of famous spiritual centers around the world. In that “romantic vision,” as Charleston describes it, they miss a wisdom that can light up every aspect of our daily lives.

A Path of Patience and Love

“The truth is that so much of our mature spirituality is not the dreamy, romantic, visionary ideas we might have imagined in our youth,” Charleston said. “A lot of spiritual life is about hard work and persistence and willingness to do jobs that are not easy and are not quickly accomplished. The spiritual path I am talking about involves patience and love. Even in the most humble ways, my path is always to be helpful to others. We need to become accountable to one another. The more we practice that kind of spiritual path, the healthier our society will become.”

I said to him, “The authenticity of daily living runs throughout your new book—and all of your books that I have read so far. These meditations in Spirit Wheel are a gateway to far deeper truths. In fact, an invitation to ponder these more timeless truths is right there on the first page of your book when you call us to focus on ‘the deeper threads of hope and mercy.’ ”

He nodded again. “The saints of old—and certainly the elders in our Native American tradition—teach us that we should hope for our spiritual lives and our daily lives to be the same.”

Discovering Global Connections with Our Creator

This Zoom conversation echoed experiences Charleston has had throughout his more than seven decades on the earth. He says his own spiritual awareness began at age 4 among his extended family and community in Oklahoma. He eventually felt a calling to Christian leadership and became a seminarian in the Episcopal church. He recounts the revelation of these connections that he felt even as he began those seminary studies in the 1970s in the opening pages of Coming Full Circle:

In 1973 I sat in a seminary classroom as a new student preparing for ordination in my Christian denomination. The professor was explaining why the religious worldview of ancient Israel was so unique. He told us that no other people of that time had come to an awareness that God was singular; monotheism was the special province of Israel’s spiritual development. Moreover, he explained how this understanding had been woven into an even deeper theology that connected the tribes of Israel to God through a covenant, a promise of a land reserved for them, and the vision of a national identity as God’s chosen people. This, he told us, was the unparalleled story of the Old Testament, the term common in those days for what we have come to call the Hebrew Covenant.

As I sat there, I kept thinking to myself, “But I have heard this story before. This is nothing unique.” In fact, it is quite common because it is shared by many tribes, many peoples, who have a memory of themselves as a People, chosen by the one God to inhabit a special land and to be in covenant relationship with their Creator. It is the story of my own ancestors. It is the “old testament,” the traditional theological story of many Native American peoples of North America. I was only a first-year student in those days, too shy in my own education to contradict my professor, but now, many years later, I realize that the vast majority of seminarians still have not heard the other half of the story of monotheism. There is a complementary theology to the testimony of ancient Israel, an ancient theology that arises out of another promised land. There is a story of the indigenous nations chosen by God to dwell here, in North America, over centuries of our spiritual development.

In Charleston’s view of the world, God has reached out to men, women and children in many ways over thousands of years—and our spiritual lives will only reconnect with and hopefully repair God’s larger community if we can open our eyes to that larger vision of the earth.

What’s in This New Book?

This book is all about opening one’s eyes and ears—in fact, all of our senses—in daily meditation. Charleston calls his practice prayer, but this book is voiced so that readers of any religious tradition—or of no religious affiliation at all—can enjoy these one-page reflections.

Part of Charleston’s daily spiritual practice is writing down descriptive lines, or sometimes micro-stories, or sometimes Psalm-like pleas or celebrations. Some of these arise in his dreams, which he has trained himself to recall and jot down when he awakes. Some of them are the direct result of his morning prayers. Some are the thankful—or sometimes troubling—sighs of a man who has seen so much of the world that he now sees new spiritual facets in the most common tasks of daily life.

In the opening pages, he explains “the mystery of this book” as: “Somehow, I believe, the words you find here will speak to you. They will not only make sense; they will rise up out of your own experience. They will not be telling you something you did not know but rather something that has been part of you forever.”

Across Zoom, I told Charleston that my own favorite meditation is one that I have read, re-read and re-read again. It’s called “The Spirit Lives Next Door”

I still have trouble believing the Spirit lives next door.
I thought Spirit lived far away, in a gated community.
But at times I find the Spirit shuffling around next door
Early in the morning, coffee cup in hand
Looking a lot like me.
Spirit waves, I wave
But this neighbor Spirit
Disconcerts me with such nearness.
Until I need a favor.
Then I am glad the Spirit lives nearby
And is always home when needed.
I peep over the fence for a chat
A time to borrow what I need
And never be asked to return it.

As we came to the close of our hour-long conversation, I asked Charleston how he hopes this book will shape the lives of his readers.

“Motivated,” he said, pausing a long time after that one word. “Motivated is the word that describes my hope. I hope that this book motivates people in any number of ways. It can be motivation to action, to getting out into the world and taking their spirituality with them to join the struggle for preserving the earth. Or it may motivate them to become a more kind and patient person—to motivate people to value the truth and have that kind of authenticity in their daily work.

“At the end of the day, I don’t think I’m giving people anything they don’t already know. I am trying to help readers find those places that are already there in their lives. That sense of transcendence and connection is there in all human beings. Finding those and releasing those are a part of life. That’s what my writing is all about.”

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Care to Learn More?

Get Steven Charleston’s books! There are so many places to start. This week, we are recommending his newest book of daily meditations, which allows readers to begin to practice the kind of long-term, day-by-day prayerful reflections that are such a foundation in Charleston’s life. So, please, visit Amazon and order a copy of Spirit Wheel—Meditations from an Indigenous Elder

If you want to dig deeper into Native American reflections on connections between Christian and Native traditions, you’ll want to read Coming Full Circle—Constructing Native Christian Theology.

Or, you may want to pre-order Charleston’s upcoming We Survived the End of the World: Lessons from Native America on Apocalypse and Hope, which will be released on September 19, 2023.

Want to learn more about connections with Social Determinants of Health and community-based wellbeing?

Order a copy of the very helpful and inspiring book, Now What? The Gifts and Challenges of Aging.

Want to learn more about the many other Native American issues our magazine has been covering?

Check out these stories:

Water Walkers series: Carol Trembath debuts her latest Native American book ‘Pass the Feather’

Bill Tammeus on: ‘Land Acknowledgment’ is a first step toward justice for our Native American neighbors

Exposing the horrors of the Indian Boarding Schools: Why we need to read Warren Petoskey’s ‘Dancing My Dream’ now

And: In Native Echoes, Kent Nerburn returns from Indian country with A Liturgy of the Land

 

Harry Emerson Fosdick: a prophet’s voice still echoes in our racially divided America

August 21, 2023 by

Fosdick was so famous—his critics at the time called him “infamous” for his prophetic preaching—that he was featured on TIME magazine’s cover in 1925 (the image shown on our front page this week) and again in 1930 as shown here. Both of these cover images are now out of copyright and in public domain, according to Wikimedia Commons.

By BENJAMIN PRATT
Author of Short Stuff from a Tall Guy

As I laid down my daily newspaper the other day, recoiling from one more report about racially motivated violence, I thought:

This is why we need prophets.

I’m talking about prophets in our biblical tradition, men and women who dare to stand up and name the evils in our contemporary culture and remind us of a different way to live.

Think for just a moment about this question: How long has it been since you heard a sermon about sin? Yes, there are many sermons preached about greed, moral cowardice, self-righteousness, snobbery—the list of ills is long. But how often have you heard them referenced as sins? I suspect we are anxious about using that word today, because it reminds us perhaps of a fire-and-brimstone style of preaching that often is more toxic than truly motivating.

Yet, I don’t think I’m alone in reacting to the weekly litany of hate crimes by wishing that more prophetic voices were raised in all houses of worship nationwide to clearly name the sins of racism that continue to dominate American life. I say “all houses of worship” here because this particular sin has often been named in historically Black churches. What I wish we could hear was a more unified choir of voices of all color lifting up and naming this struggle.

You may think that prophets, motivated by our religious traditions, are irrelevant today. After all, one in four Americans now say they don’t have a personal religious affiliation. Millions of Americans seem to be abandoning religious authority. But, in fact, prophetic voices from many religious traditions continue to make a huge difference in lives around the world. That’s why my column that you’re reading right now is paired with this week’s ReadTheSpirit Cover Story on the prophetic work of Dr. David Gushee.

Or, you can read earlier stories in our magazine about the prophetic work of George A. Mason, Rabbi Lenore Bohm, Mallory McDuff or Daneen Akers.

These voices can be powerful, can move people to change their hearts, to re-engage in our society in helpful new ways.

A tradition in our American history

In this column, I want to remind readers that this tradition is longer than you might imagine in American history. One prominent voice against our sin of American racism was raised by the lead pastor at Riverside Church, New York: the Rev. Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969) who was born and reared in Buffalo, NY.

Fosdick was commissioned for the ministry in the Baptist tradition in 1903 and graduated from Union Seminary in 1904. In 1918, he was called to First Presbyterian Church in New York City, and on May 21, 1922, he delivered his famous sermon Shall the Fundamentalists Win? In that prophetic sermon, he presented the Bible as a record of the unfolding of God’s will, not as the literal Word of God. He saw the history of Christianity as one of development, progress, and gradual change.

Just last year, as Russia’s attack on Ukraine began, historian Diana Butler Bass recalled the relevance of that sermon, which she described as “one of the most important and influential sermons of the 20th century.” She related that 1922 sermon to current debates within Orthodox churches over the war in Ukraine. (The Presbyterian Church USA’s digital archive has the text of Fosdick’s entire sermon online.)

After that sermon, many of Fosdick’s Presbyterian colleagues were so angry that they forced him to defend himself in a church trial. His defense was led by none other than John Foster Dulles, who later became U.S. Secretary of State. As a result of the furor, Fosdick won a new ally in John D. Rockefeller Jr. and became the first pastor of the historic, liberal, inter-denominational Riverside Church, Manhattan, in 1930.

Naming the Sin of Racism

Fosdick never wavered in his prophetic calling. During World War II, he preached a message naming the sin of racism that was collected in a now out-of-print book he called, A Great Time to be Alive; Sermons on Christianity in Wartime.

It’s well worth re-reading a portion of that message today to remind us of our collective calling as Christian leaders. Here’s an excerpt:

“We, the democracies, are likely to reap a terrific harvest from our racial sins.

“Moreover, the whole world knows how little democracy means to us when it comes to the racial line within our own nation. I get letters from people in this city filled with antisemitic hatred so dreadful that Hitler himself could hardly improve on it. In one of our states today there is a large and lovely lake, and on that lake a camp including both white and colored soldiers, equally ready to die for their country. A friend of mine has seen ten thousand of those soldiers swimming at one time in that lake, but no Negro was among them. Owing to local prejudice, the military authorities dare not allow a colored man to enter the water.

“Far from being an isolated phenomenon, this is symbolic of an intolerable situation affecting nearly one-tenth of the population of the United States. No section of the country is free from blame. Whether it be Jim Crow segregation, the closing of hotels and restaurants to Negroes, the refusal to address them as Mr. or Miss or Mrs., accosting them only by their given names, the denial to them of equality before the law, at the ballot box, and in educational opportunity, or the restriction of their employment to certain narrow fields regardless of their abilities, North and South alike we must rethink our attitude toward the Negro if we are not to make a farce of our democracy.

“And nowhere is this more true than in our churches where often it is sheer hypocrisy to read from the New Testament: ‘There cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman; but Christ is all, and in all.’

“Do not waste your moral failure; it is deplorable, but don’t waste it; it need not be a total loss; not only can you escape from it but you can make use of it. The Apostle Paul himself started as a persecutor of the church. I never read this thirteenth chapter of I Corinthians on love without seeing those blood-stained hands of his writing it. That violence of his against the Christians was an awful sin; he suffered agony about it but he learned something from it so profound and moving that when he wrote about the opposite of violence, love, he said something unforgettable that no ordinary man could ever have said.

“Paul’s moral failure was not wasted.

“If someone protests that it is dangerous doctrine to say that sin can be put to good uses, I answer: No! Just because trouble can be used to great ends nobody goes out looking for it, and just because sin can be transmuted into gain, no one will plunge into it. To make a huge blunder, to land in a Far Country, to suffer shame’s agony, and then to have to come again, saying, “I am no more worthy to be called thy son”—no man in his senses will go out looking for that. But when trouble and moral failure come—and they do come to all of us—don’t waste them!

“The greatest characters of history have been, as it were, born out of the travail of the sense of shame.”

Energy for the journey ahead

As I read Fosdick’s words so many decades later, I still feel that charge he lays out so powerfully in the language of his era. The core of his indictment is as valid today as it ever was.

Surely, our work of combatting racism in our country and world is a long road ahead. May we encourage each other—and prophetically energize each other—along this journey.