Resisting the Single Story: What Advent Teaches About Power
By Laurie Nichols
Every powerful system has a way of telling its own story.
It tells us who matters, who gets to speak, and who should stay quiet. It rewards certainty and punishes nuance.
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.
Subscribe to the CSA Newsletter
CSA’s free weekly publication, a carefully curated collection of original articles at the intersection of spiritual formation and social action.
By Laurie Nichols
Every powerful system has a way of telling its own story.
It tells us who matters, who gets to speak, and who should stay quiet. It rewards certainty and punishes nuance.
By Rick Barry
Presidential campaigns have a long, storied history of character attacks. Candidates have been called bastards, drunkards and moral lepers. But there’s one incredibly specific allegation that gets levied against presidential candidates more and more often in the social media era: “antichrist.”
When people on my Facebook feed started panicking about whether President Obama was the Antichrist (a panic common enough that it made it into The Onion), it was still novel to me.
By Christina Stanton
In just seven years, Yvonne Dodd Sawyer founded two organizations that pursued similar missions in very different ways. In this interview, she shares how this happened and how the cities she was in changed the way the organizations pursued their work.
By Nikki Toyama-Szeto
My neighborhood, just outside of Washington, DC, has a strong sense of local community. I know the people on our block, and I love bumping into folks—at PTA meetings, sports outings, or the grocery store.
By David de Leon
I am not a Bible scholar. In fact, the running joke for people in my field (systematic theology) is that we have absolutely no idea what to do with scripture. So when the opportunity to lead a Bible study at my church presented itself this past spring, I surprised myself and jumped at the opportunity.
By Nikki Toyama-Szeto
Season 6, Episode 10
This week on 20 Minute Takes, Nikki talks with Jesse Rudy. Trained as an attorney, Jesse is the founder and CEO of Redeem International, a Christian faith-based nonprofit that protects some of the world’s most vulnerable widows and orphans from violent abuse and exploitation.
By CSA Team
What does it mean to have hope—real hope? Gospel hope? And what does hope look like when we are in the midst of questionable, unsettling, or unsure times?
Is hope naïve?
By Nikki Toyama-Szeto
Season 6, Episode 9
This week, David de Leon interviews CSA Executive Director and 20 Minute Takes host Nikki Toyama-Szeto. Nikki shares what it looks like to lead a justice organization justly.
By Kristyn Komarnicki
In April, my husband and I accepted an offer for our home of 25 years. Over the next 60 days, we spent almost every free hour going through what we’d collected over that quarter century.
By Caleb Campbell
This is excerpted from Disarming Leviathan: Loving Your Christian Nationalist Neighbor, by Caleb Campbell.
For me one of the most painful revelations of 2020 was that many within the American church were not placing their ultimate hope in Jesus but were instead buying the false promises of Christian nationalism—a movement that calls Christian followers to take government power at all costs to advance their preferred way of being in the world.
By Rick Barry and Shane Claiborne
Talking with God about how American politics can malform our hearts.
By Rick Barry
Season 6, Episode 6
This week, Nikki talks with Rick Barry, Executive Director of the Center for Christian Civics. Rick helps Christians think about what it looks like for their communities to show up in the public square, and in this episode he helps us to wrap our minds around what civic discipleship looks like and helps break down the variety of ways people understand “politics” today.
By Ron Sider
Season 6, Episode 5
July 27, 2024, will mark two years since Ron Sider, founder and President Emeritus of Christians for Social Action (originally Evangelicals for Social Action), passed away.
By Rick Barry and Lisa Rodriguez-Watson
Fifteen minutes of guided prayer covering a tragic feature of American political life.
By Jasmin Shupper
Season 6, Episode 4
This week, Nikki interviews Jasmin Shupper, the CEO and Founder of the Greenline Housing Foundation, a non-profit organization that aims to close the racial wealth and homeownership gaps and reverse the effects of systemic racism in housing by granting access to home ownership for people of color.
By Gabrielle Clowdus
Season 6, Episode 3
This week on 20 Minute Takes, Nikki chats with Dr. Gabrielle Clowdus of Settled, an organization that addresses long-term homelessness through research-based holistic and communal approaches.
By Nishan de Mel
Season 6, Episode 2
This week on 20 Minute Takes, we hear from economist Nishan de Mel. In front of a live audience, Nishan talks about how he and his organization, Verité Research, attempted to tackle corruption in governance in Sri Lanka, as well as what it means to participate in inherently unjust structures with an eye toward truth and transformation.