Culture

Free Speech on Social Media: Anything Goes

By |

In continuation of my series on First Amendment rights as they impact religious minority groups, I address current controversy over social media posts maligning religious groups. My previous post in this series entitled Does Freedom of Speech Allow Stereotyping discussed a greeting card that stereotyped Muslims as terrorists in an unusually offensive and glaringly inaccurate way. This week I have chosen another unfortunate event, a Facebook post that ignited debate over the possible classification of certain types of content as threats instead of free speech. Tennessee County Commissioner Barry West posted a picture on his Facebook page showing a cowboy aiming a shotgun at the camera with the caption “How to Wink at a Muslim”. My personal feelings of disgust aside, the post once again shows a classic example of stereotyping, this time through social media, which is so much more viral than a greeting card.

Christianity

School Board Member on Why She Got Arrested

By |

I am a member of the Board of Education for Durham Public Schools, but I did not go to speak to the Legislature as a board member. I went as a Christian, as a product of the public school system of NC, and as a mother. I went to speak on behalf of the children in Durham who I claim as mine – especially the 27% of children who live below the poverty line. It is these vulnerable children – the least of these – who will be hurt the most by the policies being promoted by the majority in this General Assembly. These children are depending on our schools to become educated citizens who can contribute to our state. We must not abandon them.

Christianity

The Church's Second Birthday

By |

Have you ever had to reinvent yourself? I have. I am sure that many of you have. The phrase has a peculiarly American flavor, as if oneself were the hero of the whole project—designer, director, and finished product. But re-invention is just a phrase; the experience to which it refers has always belonged to the human predicament. Of such is the story of Arjuna—Odysseus—Jacob—Job—Jesus in the wilderness—Jesus before the Cross. Re-invention comes to this.

Islam

A New Generation of Political Terrorists

By |

How long will we continue to condemn and apologize for the actions of the deranged, as if one, ten or even a couple of million can represent 1.6 billion Muslims? When a white shooter kills elementary school kids, or a pastor burns the Quran, Christians everywhere don’t scramble to apologize publicly for the actions of individuals or fringe group. This discussion isn’t new, and yet the world in general doesn’t seem to have learned that divide and conquer has always been the best military/political strategy of all time. And so with the blame game, the terrorists win again.

Christianity

Weekly Sermon: The Word Is Very Near

By |

Riverside, our crises have arrived. There is the seemingly external crisis of climate change, which many deny; and the crisis internal to the church, namely, to hear together one word why Riverside must exist for a whole world; one word, deeper than all our differences. This word is very near. How will you hear it?

Islam

America's Chosen Muslims

By |

While the voices of moderate Islam are many, they are not a cohesive or collective voice because Muslims apart from the Ahmadiyya Community are not unified under a single leadership. They disagree among themselves regarding religion, tradition and practices, and those disagreements become obvious to others. Without unity in the Muslim “Ummah” or community, radicalization and extremism is common because youth fall through the cracks. Each Imam guides his own flock without any idea of what’s going on in the mosque next door. Perhaps that’s the way of most religious groups. The Ahmadiyya Community on the other hand, has the organizational skills and unified approach to get things done on a local and national level, thereby gaining the attention of policy makers and media alike. They have a single message and a common goal: to bring about the rise of moderate, peaceful Islam.

Christianity

Drinking from the Justice Well

By |

I’m delighted that people are eager to hold Jesus and justice together with their whole lives-especially white evangelicals, to whom this is news. But I’m sure that we who have neglected justice for so long cannot learn to practice it well without listening closely to our sisters and brothers who’ve known Jesus while suffering injustice.
We cannot have a justice movement in 21st century America without learning from the black-led freedom struggles of the 19th and 20th centuries in this country.
This is why School for Conversion has decided to make 21st Century Freedom Rides a central piece of our public education program moving forward. And it’s why I’m devoting two weeks this summer to teaching a seminar on the East and West coast for people who are eager to drink from the wells of wisdom that America’s black-led freedom movement offers.

Healing Israel/Palestine

A Pilgimage to the Holy Land

By |

These were the people, Israeli and Palestinian both, who gave us hope. It would seem that active engagement leaves little time for despair. In contrast, we seem stuck in our comfortable lives, and reluctant to step out of our comfort zone. Maybe it’s because our own country seems vast and open still, and we don’t know yet that we belong to the same human family as everyone else. Or is it that our mind-boggling weapons of mass destruction bolster our delusional sense of exceptionalism? But Israel and Palestine are small and on top of each other, and the madness of it all can be seen at a glance: The aerial view of the territory, all cut up into twisted enclaves, looks like it has been designed by the remote judges of Kafka’s The Trial.

Inter-Culturalism

Inertness, U.S.A.

By |

Part of what fascinates me about the civil rights struggles of the 1960s is that, through these upheavals, America changed. Compare that to today’s inertness: we can barely budge on gun control and the minimum wage (for examples), despite overwhelming support among Americans for change on those fronts. Yes, there are real questions about how much progress towards racial justice we’ve made. What’s clear is that a little over a year after the May 1963 “children’s crusade” in Birmingham, Alabama, we had the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And five months after the Selma to Montgomery march came the Voting Rights Act of ’65.