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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CSA’s free weekly publication, a carefully curated collection of original articles at the intersection of spiritual formation and social action.
By CSA Staff
(Editor’s note: What does it mean to stay long enough to see resurrection? For more than three decades, the Rev. Dr. Reginald Smith has lived that question in Roosevelt Park, a predominantly Latino neighborhood in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
By Rev. Dr. Mae Elise Cannon
(Editor’s note: This is Part 3 of a four-part series exploring Christian faith, theology, and peacemaking in the Holy Land. In this installment, Rev. Dr. Mae Elise Cannon examines how theological frameworks — particularly those connected to Christian Zionism and dispensationalism — shape Christian attitudes toward Israel and Palestine.
By Melanie Mock
Two days after the United States began bombing Iran, I dropped my oldest son at the airport in Portland, OR. He was headed to National Guard boot camp, and will be gone for 10 weeks.
By Rev. Dr. Mae Elise Cannon
(Editor’s note: This is Part 2 of a four-part series exploring Christian faith, theology, and peacemaking in the Holy Land. In this installment, Rev. Dr. Mae Elise Cannon turns from history and biblical interpretation to lived experience, examining how physical barriers, borders, and political structures shape the daily realities of Palestinians and Israelis alike.
By Scott Bessenecker
A story attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi goes something like this: Once, Francis and another friar were walking past an ornate cathedral when the friar declares, “The church can no longer say, ‘Silver and gold I have not,’” referring to Peter’s words to a lame beggar at the Temple gate.
By Mae Elise Cannon
(Editor’s note: This is Part 1 of a four-part series exploring Christian faith, theology, and peacemaking in the Holy Land. In this opening article, Dr. Mae Cannon invites readers into a biblically grounded vision of shalom — challenging common assumptions about conflict in the region and examining how Scripture has often been misread in ways that obscure God’s purposes for peace.
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.