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CSA’s free weekly publication, a carefully curated collection of original articles at the intersection of spiritual formation and social action.
By Ben Norquist
An “Ultra for Peace”
I ran 50 miles in a day.
It was the longest run of my life—physically, emotionally, spiritually. But it wasn’t just a race. It was an indignant plea for justice.
By Kathy Khang
Editor’s Note: This essay was originally published on September 5, 2016, as This Is My Country and is used by generous permission of the author.
The older man walks up to the closed register next to me and looks at the wretched KFC/Pizza Hut menu at the travel oasis/rest stop near Elkhart, Indiana.
By Alex Haskins
Three nonviolent alternative approaches to navigating conflict in scripture include: “principled pluralism”, “public confrontation”, and “parting ways.” Christians committed to social justice can continue to usher in the kingdom and serve the least of these while nonviolently navigating conflict with coreligionists (and others) who might otherwise impede progress on a range of issues and forms of advocacy.
By Bill White and Brenna Rubio
Dear Pastor Conflicted about LGBTQ+ Inclusion, we have been in your shoes. You’ve started to wonder whether the church – YOUR church – needs to become more inclusive, especially of LGBTQ people, and you feel conflicted. Your heart is torn, your mind is spinning.
By Alli Bobzien
In our home we study the traditionally popular women in scripture like Esther, Ruth, and Mary. But we have added the beautiful stories of Hagar: the first female theologian who names God, Miriam and Deborah: leaders of their people, and the sisters Mahlah, Tirzah, Hoglah, Noah, and Milcah: who advocated for more just laws due to their unwavering faith.
By Rick Barry
Ultimately, the culture war paradigm is not just destructive to Christians or to the church—it is also destructive to the country.
By Kristyn Komarnicki
When we make space to lean towards each other with attention, to listen and to hear, not just the words we speak to each other but the actual hopes and hurts and fears and joys, we are offering each other the most sacred gift available to us.
By Lē Weaver
The Chicago Declaration was intended to serve as a framework for concrete evangelical engagement with the pressing social issues of the day. Christian Feminism Today (known originally as the Evangelical Women’s Caucus) came into being as a direct result of that Thanksgiving workshop, and with it a movement known as biblical feminism was born.
By Heidi Weaver-Smith
If liberation is so central to the message Jesus came to accomplish and proclaim, it must also be to those of us who profess his name and take part in his resurrected body. Christ’s life, death, and resurrection point us towards the liberative future of shalom he has accomplished for us, the already-but-not-yet Kingdom of God which breaks into our world daily, yet has not finalized its work.
By Lē Weaver
This Women’s History Month, we remember the women who helped shape the Chicago Declaration of Evangelicals for Social Action, CSA’s founding document. The Chicago Declaration, signed by 53 evangelical leaders in 1973, was written as a call for Christians to engage in issues of justice and to reject racism, economic injustice, violence, and sexism. While the group that signed the document were diverse theologically, they lacked the racial and gender diversity we strive for today.
By Kristan Pitts
May peace never come until justice is actualized. Expose to everyone injustice that is both overt and covert. Then make it so that inequity may never be hidden again.
By Liz Cooledge Jenkins
Even in the warmest and most welcoming evangelical churches, patriarchy looms as an ever-present force, suppressing women’s possibilities and debilitating whole communities. Well-intentioned churchgoers and church leaders have bought into deeply-entrenched male-dominated mindsets, power structures, and theologies that are not working—not for women, and really not for anyone.
By Inés Velásquez-McBryde
Racism has joined with sexism to dismember women of color at a cost to our heads, hearts, bodies, and souls. It has also dismembered women from women and women from men. We must repent, restore, and re-member back the places long devastated and rebuild the broken bride of Christ.
By Cole Arthur Riley
It takes real commitment, real awareness to commit yourself to pause and to know that the thing you are grieving is worth sadness.
By Heidi Weaver-Smith
Dr. Dolores E. Lee McCabe is a trailblazing figure whose life and ministry have left an indelible mark on the landscape of gender equality, have advanced the church’s prophetic witness against gun violence, and has resulted in many people converting and turning to Christ. Born in 1944, she has dedicated over four decades to ministry. Her journey is not just one of personal milestones, but a testament to her unwavering commitment to mentoring and equipping women in ministry, passionately advocating for gender equity in the church, evangelizing with unique power, and advocating against gun violence.
By Michael Stalcup
I wish I didn’t know who George Floyd was,
had never heard his name or seen his face
displayed on screens or blazoned on brick walls,
unbreathing monuments to life erased.
By Lauren Grubaugh Thomas
The Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth was a pastor and civil rights leader whose conviction and courage consistently led him to the frontlines of the struggle for justice. As someone who pushed his peers to greater risk-taking, Shuttlesworth’s leadership was crucial in elevating the cause for racial justice to the national conversation.
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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