Adoptive parents can build platforms and careers off adoption, but adoptees who circumvent the system, usually offering their emotional labor at no cost, receive backlash.
Through the writings of Howard Thurman, I have learned what I have always known. The religion of Jesus has always been about desiring a more equitable and just society, which begins first in the soul of the individual.
I wish though I could go back to that young girl, sitting in that big arena with all its grandeur. I wish I could invite her to a quiet, less intense space, and tell her she may leave the church, but it will never mean she left the faith.
It is awfully convenient to believe the right thing to do is whatever you want, at anyone else’s expense. It felt like the lives of the sick and vulnerable didn’t matter. Then George Floyd was murdered.
As professors—one a politically-engaged theologian and the other a theologically-engaged political scientist—we admit that this situation leaves us concerned and scratching our heads. In our current American context, we wonder: what does it mean to live an authentic life of faith?
We are witnessing the ways that Christianity’s tentacles have bound themselves to patriarchy, nationalism, and white supremacy. For many of us rooted in this tradition, this is a moment of reckoning with its violence.
But you know, I'm not a single-issue person either. I mean, my ethic is one of life. I believe every person is made in the image of God. So for me, the immigration issue is a pro-life issue. The death penalty is. Our obsession with guns is. The Black Lives Matter movement and racial justice are. All of these are issues of life.