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 Liz Cooledge Jenkins
Over the past few months, many relatively-privileged people in the U.S. have experienced the terror and overwhelm of empire’s destructive violence in a highly personal way for the first time.
But others have been processing the horrors of living under the thumb of empire for a long time already.
By Kelley Nikondeha
As an adopted person I’ve lived with the reality of a hidden history. My origin story remains unknown to me, sealed by a court order for almost 50 years now. I know little about my mother—just that she was Mexican and an accountant at the time of my birth.
By Brennan Manning
To think like Christ is to have Jesus’ relational attitude toward his disciples. His attitude was beautifully expressed to me on a tour through Sleepy Hollow Village on the Hudson River. Our guide’s only instruction was, “Please be gentle with the lambs.
By Carolyn Custis James
When Dr. Colleen Kraft, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, visited a U.S. government shelter for immigrant children in Combes, Texas, what she saw undid her.
A distraught toddler was crying inconsolably and pounding her small fists against the play mat.
By Elrena Evans
“We don’t even know how to talk to each other anymore,” says Pastor Griff Martin
By Jennifer Grant
The doors of our refrigerators, once a gallery of finger-painted artwork and soccer snack schedules, are now clean and spare. Minivans have been traded in for something sleeker or have become the property of our teenagers.
Quote by Paul Tillich
Love listens. It is its first task to listen.
All things and all people, so to speak, call on us with small or loud voices. They want us to listen, they want us to understand their intrinsic claims, their justice of being.
By James A. Cates, Jr.
“Jake” was a small boy for 15 years of age. It was difficult to imagine the severe emotional disturbance that led to his placement in a residential treatment center, but it was also difficult to imagine the abuse experienced in his home.
Review by Michael Lee
Editor’s Note: This review contains spoilers.
The movie First Reformed, written and directed by Paul Schrader, is a stunning, profound, and haunting story about faith, despair, decay, death and the apparent absence of God.
Quote by Martin Luther King Jr.
It may well be that we will have to repent in this generation. Not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say, “Wait on time.”
~ Martin Luther King Jr.
From Sword of the Spirit’s College Toolkit
Gun violence is a sensitive subject that can elicit strong emotions. Here are some suggestions on how to engage in a respectful, productive dialogue on the topic.
Start here
Listen.
By Emma Lazarus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles.
By Jon Carlson
In 1971, Dr. Mary Daly became the first woman to preach at the Memorial Church of Harvard University in its 336-year history. Selecting her Biblical texts, she wove together what Rev. Dr.
By Elrena Evans
My daughter’s first year of Vacation Bible School, she decided halfway through the week that she didn’t want to be a Christian.
I learned about her decision from a teen volunteer, who came to find me, ensconced in the nursing mother’s room at the church with my three-month-old.
By Melanie Springer Mock
As a Christian college student several decades ago, I knew without a doubt that the holiest, most sanctified majors on campus where those preparing their graduates for overseas missions.
Quote by Gloria Steinem
Every social justice movement that I know of has come out of people sitting in small groups, telling their life stories, and discovering that other people have shared similar experiences.
~ Gloria Steinem
By Nikki Toyama-Szeto
As terror continues to unfold on our southern borders and immigrant children are taken from their parents’ arms, over 2800 women have signed a letter calling for an end to the practice of separating children from their parents at the border.