Lament, Despair, and Hope
By Rick Barry
Many evangelical Christians confuse lamentation for despair. This confusion can cut us off from one of the most powerful tools in our spiritual arsenal.
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By Rick Barry
Many evangelical Christians confuse lamentation for despair. This confusion can cut us off from one of the most powerful tools in our spiritual arsenal.
By Tamice Spencer-Helms
It had been three years since Trayvon Martin was killed. I was living in Atlanta, Georgia, working full-time for a mostly white college ministry. And I was dying inside.
I spent the three years after Trayvon died in perpetual despair.
By Liz Cooledge Jenkins
Editor’s note: Originally published March 3, 2022, we believe Liz’s suggestions below, after completing a month-long celebration of Black authors, can be a meaningful way to both kick off Lent and to continue to honor and learn from our Black brothers and sisters.
By David Clough
What emotions do you bring to worship this evening? Delight at glimpses of beauty and of love? Sadness at tragic loss? Anger at injustice? Resentment and bitterness about our lot?
By Brandi Miller
Originally published June 9, 2021
After the presidential victory of Donald Trump wherein the vast majority of White evangelicals voted for the celebrity-turned-crass-politician, many Christians both inside and outside the church were forced to reckon with an issue of identity.
From “A Booklet of Uncommon Prayer” by Kenji Kuramitsu
A Prayer for an End to Violence at the Hands of the State
By Rev. Da Saint
Originally published Feb 26, 2021
Black History Month Meditative Moment (3 of 3)
Join us for a 5-minute body scan to bring our body and spirit into congruence.
By Bishop Ernest McNear and Reverend Lin Crowe
The statistics hang over the cities of America like a thick grey cloud, almost blotting out the light of hope and opportunity. One out of every nine young black males in the United States between the ages of twenty and thirty-four is behind bars.
By Thomas Merton
The Big Results Are Not in Your Hands
Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect.
By M. Karim
CSA Editor’s note: The following opinion piece is written by a Palestinian Christian using a pseudonym to protect their identity. Please note that the word “Jewish” in this essay is not a blanket term for all peoples of the Jewish diaspora; but refers to the specific people within this specific geographic region where the author is from, and reflects the way the word is used in their context.
By Kenji Kuramitsu
Originally published June 3, 2020
A Booklet of Uncommon Prayer, from which this prayer is taken, is now available electronically!
By Katelyn Durst
Originally published August 15, 2019
We are here
and you’d like to forget it,
have us more hidden
then our black faces
and tired, old eyes.
“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free” (Gal. 5:1), and yet when it comes to our relationships, especially those across deep theological and/or political difference, many of us battle some combination of resentment, hopelessness, fear, and outrage.
By Rachel Marie Stone
“How much responsibility did Bathsheba have in that affair? After all, she was bathing where David could see her!” I have heard this line, and others like it, many times in the course of my evangelical upbringing
By Tim Otto
Christmas celebrates the richest person who ever lived giving up everything just to be with us. And we celebrate his coming by buying and more buying, and yearning, yearning for more.
Climate change is one of the greatest threats to our human community and the environment in this century.
By Liz Cooledge Jenkins
God,
Sometimes we have no idea what peace would mean.
It’s all too difficult.
Everything in us is tired.
CSA is a group of Christian scholar-activists, stirring the imagination for a fuller expression of Christian faithfulness and a more just society.
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