This Online Articles area (formerly our Library) gathers reflections, op-eds, and essays that engage the pressing questions of faith, justice, and public life. Here, you’ll find hundreds of thoughtful and engaging pieces from scholars, practitioners, and everyday Christians — leaders and writers who bring fresh insight and faithful imagination. These articles are meant to spark deeper discipleship, fuel courageous action, and equip the church to embody the gospel in a complex world. We invite you to explore, learn, and join the ongoing conversation toward a fuller expression of Christian faithfulness and a more just society.
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By Rubin McClain
Last year, at the beginning of Lent 2025, I joined a group of students, scholars, and activists on a Sabeel trip to the “Holy Land.” While I was reflecting on what exactly is “holy” in a moment in which the region is filled with strife and conflict, the arid landscape echoed back to me as a forceful impression of my dreary thoughts.
By Rubin McClain
Last year, at the beginning of Lent 2025, I joined a group of students, scholars, and activists on a Sabeel trip to the “Holy Land.” While I was reflecting on what exactly is “holy” in a moment in which the region is filled with strife and conflict, the arid landscape echoed back to me as a forceful impression of my dreary thoughts.
(A Storytellers Collective Feature)
On Chicago’s West Side, Pastor Phil Jackson learned early that justice doesn’t begin behind a desk.
When he joined Lawndale Christian Community Church in the mid-1990s, Phil quickly realized that traditional models of ministry weren’t going to reach the young people he cared most about.
By Scott Bessenecker
For me, Lent has long been an invitation to hunger and thirst for God’s kingdom to take deeper root in my life and in this world. It is a season that gives shape to longing, a hunger for Easter, for resurrection, and for the unfolding of God’s good-news-to-the-poor kingdom among us.
By Terence Lester, PhD
One of the most pressing challenges facing the Christian faith right now is not simply political division, but moral inconsistency and the lack of courage to speak out against blatant injustices that are anti-Christian, wrong, destructive, and harmful to vulnerable people and targeted communities.
By Rev. Dr. Allen L. Hollie Jr.
“For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing… O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Romans 7:18-24)
The Epistle and the Experience
When the Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Rome, admitting that a war raged within his own members, he was not offering abstract theology.
(A Storytellers Collective Feature)
Across the United States, health care systems are straining under the weight of policy decisions made far from the people most affected by them. For millions of families, access to care is fragile — shaped by underfunded systems, racial inequities, and growing threats to Medicaid and other safety-net programs.
By Anonymous
(Editor’s note: We are publishing this reflection anonymously out of concern for the safety and well-being of the author and their family. As the author describes, immigrants and their loved ones are increasingly vulnerable to surveillance, retaliation, and denial of legal processes simply for speaking critically about U.S.
By Scott Bessenecker
It’s time for America to return the Statue of Liberty.
This “Mother of Exiles,” who calls to the tired, poor, huddled masses, has become a promise that no longer reflects reality.
By Josh Olds
On a sweltering Alabama summer night in July 1993, a man named Gregory “New York” Huguley was forced into a car, driven to an abandoned Little League field, tied to a bench, doused in gasoline, and set on fire.
By David Swanson
(Editor’s Note: January 21, 2026 | This essay was written prior to the most recent events unfolding in Minneapolis and other cities and is not intended as commentary on any single protest, incident, or tactic.
By Liz Cooledge Jenkins
By the rivers of Babylon—there we sat down, and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” -Psalm 137:1-3 (NRSVUE)
How different is this biblical song from the upbeat worship music we hear sung every Sunday morning in most U.S.
By Caleb Hui and Sam Chao
(Editor’s Note: As detention and deportation escalate, families like Yeonsoo Go’s reveal the human cost of current immigration policies. Here, Caleb and Sam examine why the Christian practice of sanctuary matters now — and how churches have historically responded when the state became the threat.
(A Storytellers Collective Feature)
In neighborhoods across the United States, cycles of violence, incarceration, and disinvestment have shaped generations. Yet within these same communities, there are also stories of resilience — stories that challenge us to imagine what becomes possible when people refuse to be defined by their worst act, and when communities commit themselves to the long work of repair and flourishing.
By David Swanson
I grabbed my phone and texted, “What do you think about the news from Venezuela?” It was Sunday morning, just hours after the U.S. launched a military strike in Caracas, the country’s capital and location of President Nicolás Maduro’s compound.
By Ben Norquist
We are told to reach for personal resets in January. We resolve to exercise more often, cultivate better habits, pray more faithfully, and so on. This annual ritual is predicated on the idea that we have the power to become better versions of ourselves through personal effort.
By Rohadi Nagassar
John the Baptist spots his cousin off in the desert distance and beckons with excitement:
“Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29)
John’s words are worthy of our attention, because he articulates the future vocation of Jesus in a single sentence — a vocation that has been lost to many contemporary Christians, particularly those who reduce salvation to merely “personal” experience.