Becoming Reparative Communities
By Terence Lester, PhD
(Editor’s note: This is the final piece of our 4-part series on economic injustice. You can find Part 1 here, Part 2 here, and Part 3 here. In this final piece, Dr.
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 Terence Lester, PhD
(Editor’s note: This is the final piece of our 4-part series on economic injustice. You can find Part 1 here, Part 2 here, and Part 3 here. In this final piece, Dr.
By Elaine A. Heath
It was the middle of summer, and I was preaching through a series entitled “Men, Women, and God.” While the congregation was accepting of me as their pastor, they still tended to have patriarchal views about gender.
By Stephen Mattson
American Christianity has been a horrible place for women. It ignores them, abuses them, assaults them, objectifies them, oppresses them, and then attempts to theologically rationalize it all as being “Biblical” and “holy.” The Church has been a willing co-conspirator in the widespread affliction of women.
By Nasreen Fynewever
I push the paddle to the side and let my kayak float for a few moments to consider the real reasons why we want our schools to be the incubators of both free thought and inclusive practices.
By Ellie Wilber
God,
We feel afraid, angry, and powerless. We are hearing, from so many voices, that we do not have value in this society. That if we speak up we will not be heard.
By Al Tizon
I wish that the words “gospel,” “church,” and “mission” had no need of additional adjectives to convey their compelling truths. I wish that when outsiders heard these words, they would imagine a community of ordinary but loving people who shine the light of God in a darkened world (Matthew 5:16).
By Oscar Romero with Michael Lapsley
Oscar Romero spent just three years as Archbishop of San Salvador, but by the time he was murdered in 1980 he had become a shepherd to all the people of El Salvador, and the outspoken advocate of its oppressed peasants.
By Catherine Kroeger
Like an abused woman, the church is battered and bleeding—from a wound that she fails to recognize. Many evangelicals cannot bear to acknowledge that spousal abuse is an enduring problem within our very walls.
By Melanie Springer Mock
Every once in a while, I read a book that resonates with me so fully, I wish I could become close friends with its author. I presume this is the case with most inveterate readers: we see our lives represented in an author’s words, and feel that—perhaps for the first time—someone has articulated our own experiences and world views completely.
Earlier this month, a group of diverse evangelicals and evangelical-adjacents met in Chicago to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern, and to try to discern what God’s invitation is to followers of Jesus in this particular time and place.
By Natasha Sistrunk Robinson
I don’t remember eating the meal provided at the church that day. I don’t remember what I did before or after the service. I don’t remember whether I wore my midshipman service dress blue uniform or a traditional black dress—it wasn’t exactly a day for taking pictures.
Quote by André Trocmé
All who affirm the use of violence admit it is only a means to achieve justice and peace. But peace and justice are nonviolence…the final end of history. Those who abandon nonviolence have no sense of history. Rather they are bypassing history, freezing history, betraying history.
By Celia Riley
“If your son didn’t come home from school and you heard he was arrested, who could you call? If your husband is from the West Bank and you have Jerusalem residency, how will you get the permits necessary to live together?
By Elrena Evans
My instinct is to stay in bed, smother fear with a pillow, cultivate the illusion of safety beneath the warmth of my duvet. Waking to the news of yet another shooting, stabbing, natural disaster, investigation update, I find myself echoing Francis Schaeffer: How should we then live?
By Shapri LoMaglio
When asked whether Jews should pay taxes to the Roman government that was ruling over them, Jesus’ deft response in Matthew 22:21 to “give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s” not only evaded the political snare that had been set for him, but it also clearly demarcated to Christians that while they were to respect earthly political systems, by no means should those systems capture their chief loyalty.
By Jonathan Haidt
I was born and raised in a Jewish family in the suburbs of New York City. I was the sort of kid that was so attracted to science that within two years of my bar mitzvah, I started calling myself an atheist. Not just an atheist, but one of those atheists that sees religion, Christianity especially, as the enemy
By Allison Duncan
On a drive to visit my family, a billboard for a jeweler showed me a picture of a diamond ring with a speech bubble that said, “It’s time you told your boyfriend about me.”
“You didn’t think we’d forget, did you?” purred an ad I got from Victoria’s Secret during the month of my birthday, offering me $10 toward a gift for myself.