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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 Scott Bessenecker
The empires of this world exploit the vulnerable. Its economics reward those who plunder the environment. Money gravitates to the center while some people are pushed to the margins. In contrast, the economics in the land of God are centrifugal, pushing resources out to the edges. The social forces are magnetic, drawing the excluded into the center.
By Scott Bessenecker
The empires of this world exploit the vulnerable. Its economics reward those who plunder the environment. Money gravitates to the center while some people are pushed to the margins. In contrast, the economics in the land of God are centrifugal, pushing resources out to the edges. The social forces are magnetic, drawing the excluded into the center.
By John Dear
The gospels portray Jesus of Nazareth as the most active person of nonviolence in the history of the world. He taught a glorious vision of nonviolence: “Love your enemies. Blessed are the peacemakers. Put down your sword. Be as compassionate as God. Hunger and thirst for justice. Seek first God’s reign and God’s justice.” As his followers, we are forbidden to support war, killings, executions, nuclear weapons, corporate greed, environmental destruction, or violence of any kind. More, we are sent into the culture of violence and war on a mission of prophetic peacemaking and active nonviolent resistance to evil.
By Lisa Sharon Harper
Patriarchal interpretations of Scripture fail to start at the beginning. They started after the Fall, in genesis 3. As a result, they present observations of a fallen world as if the current state is in line with God’s good intentions. That is far from the truth. What God called very good was before the Fall!
By Carol R. Cool
The biblical perspective is for us to live in wholeness, which includes a generous sufficiency of things. Poverty is a bad thing; God wants us to have all we need for a joyous life. God wants no one to be poor.
By Christina Edmondson
This is the second installation in our Chicago Declaration Series which celebrates the 50th anniversary of CSA’s founding document, the Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern. 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.
By Amy Reynolds
The Chicago Declaration Series is a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern, a document drafted in 1973 by several evangelical faith leaders, and signed by 53 signatories.
By Bill White
From the back of the gymnasium/fellowship hall, I counted 249 church-goers and leaders, and every one of them was leaning in. No one was on their phone—no, they were too intent on trying to make sense of the unusual scene unfolding in front of them.
By Melanie Springer Mock
My prayer life has never been richer than in the past few years, because my children were becoming adults and I have sometimes felt an acute need for divine intervention in their lives.
By Kayla Craig
They scream with tears in their eyes as they wrestle and fight. “MO-OMMM!” they shout, beckoning me to referee yet another match of brother vs. brother.
I sigh and sit on their bedroom rug, motioning for them to take a seat next to me.
By Michael Stalcup
This poem was originally published in Sojourners Magazine, inspired by James Cone’s book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree.
We shudder at the inhumanity,
the crafted cruelness of that sickening show:
the stripped humiliation, blasphemy
of beaten flesh, death’s agonies stretched slow
by fellow men created in God’s image,
turned terrorists, enslaved to sin’s strange fruit.
By Kaitlin B. Curtice
Originally published on November 26, 2019
I’m constantly asked for resources on how people can move forward learning about Indigenous culture, and I’m often repeating the same thing: read books.
By Kristyn Komarnicki
“The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all [people] human and, therefore, [siblings].”
– Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
The last 12 years of facilitating dialogue across difference through CSA’s Oriented to Love program have taught me many things.
Editor’s note: This piece is part 4 of our 4-part series on the levels of strategy for nonviolent direct action for racial justice. Click here to start at the beginning.
A political miracle for racial justice occurred in Birmingham, Alabama, in the late spring of 1963.
By Liz Cooledge Jenkins
For me, the summer of 2023 feels like the time when the climate crisis finally became impossible to ignore—which may simply mean that the climate crisis has started to impact me personally in more obvious ways.
Editor’s note: This piece is part 3 of our 4-part series on strategic nonviolent direct action for racial justice. Click here to start at the beginning.
“Freedom only comes through persistent revolt — through persistent agitation.”
– Rev.
By Kristyn Komarnicki
As a kid, I was a terrible bully. In 3rd grade, I kidnapped a kid’s blue rock, which he’d brought in for show-and-tell. I left a ransom note that reduced him to a tearful panic, which only made me hate him more.
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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