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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 Kristyn Komarnicki
Love in the midst of discomfort
Love your God, love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets rest on these two commands…
Leap of Faith is a full-length documentary from Nicholas Ma and Morgan Neville (Won’t You Be My Neighbor?) featuring pastors who commit to meeting for a year to look for a path to unity in the midst of polarized times.
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.
By Kristyn Komarnicki
Originally published December 21, 2018
We love movies about clever heists, where high-tech and highly organized thieves outwit security systems and break into “uncrackable” safes. We thrill to scenes of Cary Grant scaling rooftops in Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief, warming to the lovable cat burglar’s idiosyncratic character.
By Rohadi Nagassar
Advent is countercultural to the typical pageantry of many contemporary church routines that crescendo into Christmas Day. Instead of skipping directly to stories of Jesus’ birth, Advent holds our attention to the way Jesus intercedes in the history of humanity and ushers in new possibilities of light overcoming all darkness—not merely a spiritual darkness, either; rather, a tangible material liberation from all powers that marginalize.
By Liz Cooledge Jenkins
Editor’s Note: This post is part of a 4-part series for Advent 2022 by Liz Cooledge Jenkins
God,
There is a space within us empty until filled with joy.
By Lisa Rodriguez-Watson
“It must have been so difficult to leave her life, her friends, her family and have only one suitcase to take with her,” I remarked to my abuela as we talked about her sister, Raquel, who had recently defected from Cuba to the United States while on a government trip.
By Liz Cooledge Jenkins
Editor’s Note: This post is part of a 4-part series for Advent 2022 by Liz Cooledge-Jenkins
God,
Your love is unbounded.
Your love unbinds us.
By Tim Ignacio
Editor’s Note: This post is part of our Advent series 2022 entitled “Advent from the Margins,” where we’ve asked writers to submit reflections on what waiting for Christ means in their context.
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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