Magazine
Westminster John Knox Press
HAVE YOU EVER heard a sermon on Dinah? Have you read many commentaries on Hegai? In The Hero and the Whore: Reclaiming Healing and Liberation Through Stories of Sexual Exploitation in the Bible, Camille Hernandez, a trauma-informed educator and minister, interprets the narrative of these lesser-known biblical characters. She also reinterprets the stories of well-known figures — such as Eve, Rahab, and Potiphar’s wife — through the lens of sexual exploitation. For too long, stories of women in the Bible have been interpreted in religious cultures rooted in racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia. As a result, many Christians have stripped these characters of their agency and voice, demonized them, and sometimes ignored them altogether.
Hernandez provides language to reclaim our own narratives and process our own trauma. She encourages imagining a future where all people are safe and protected from sexual violence and other forms of oppression — both in the church and in society at large.
Artwork featuring Sinéad O'Conner at the Hard Rock Cafe in Dubin. Niall Carson / Alamy Stock Photo
AS AN INFANT, my son Malachi inserted an “el” sound into his cries. “Ah-La,” he wailed with outstretched arms. My husband Michael scooped up our boy and crooned Sinéad O’Connor’s lyrics, “All babies are born saying God’s name” (from “All Babies,” on the album Universal Mother, 1994).
As church-going Christians, we didn’t call God “Allah,” but we recognized it as the Islamic name for the Most Divine. We heard that name in our baby’s voice. But what strange lullaby was my husband singing to our child? “All babies are born out of great pain / Over and over, all born into great pain / All babies are crying / For no one remembers God’s name.”
I came of age to O’Connor’s 1990 album I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, belting out every word to the hit “Nothing Compares 2 U.” I stayed up late one night during 9th grade to watch O’Connor on S aturday Night Live. I was confused when she sang a cover of Bob Marley’s “War,” itself a rendition of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie’s 1963 speech to the U.N., then tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II. I did not know then that she was protesting years of rampant child sexual abuse largely ignored by the church. She wanted us to listen to the cries of children.
From Netflix
A Sci-Fi Dark Comedy
They Cloned Tyrone is both hilarious and harrowing in its depiction of a drug dealer, sex worker, and pimp who suspect the U.S. government is experimenting on their community. The film shows how, too often, Black people must choose between assimilation or annihilation. Netflix
From Oppenheimer
IN CHRISTOPHER NOLAN'S film Oppenheimer, J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) gives a speech to his assembled Manhattan Project team in Los Alamos, N.M., shortly after the U.S. drops an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, in early August of 1945. In a small auditorium in this town built for the sole purpose of developing the bomb, Oppenheimer looks over a crowd of ecstatic scientists and their families, who greet him with cheers. Some of them are waving American flags.
As Oppenheimer starts praising the team and what their great achievement means for the U.S., we’re given a window into his internal torment: The background starts to blur and vibrate. We hear a child’s scream. Oppenheimer sees a woman’s face start to flake away. Looking down, a charred human body clings to his leg. Oppenheimer sweats. He swallows. He continues speaking, but it’s clear he’s dissociated from the speech he’s written.
From Indiana University
ON APRIL 13, 2023, Ralph Yarl, a Black 16-year-old in Kansas City, Mo., went to pick up his younger siblings from a friend’s house. Mixing up the address, Yarl accidentally knocked on the door of an 84-year-old white man, Andrew D. Lester, who reacted by shooting Yarl in the head and then in the arm. Police took Lester into custody, only to release him without charges in less than two hours. As a result, protesters marched in Lester’s neighborhood, calling for his arrest. After days of protest, Lester was apprehended. In court, he pleaded not guilty, saying that he shot Yarl twice because he was “scared to death.” Yarl was in the hospital for three days before returning home to recover. In response to the shooting, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, who is Black, lamented, “You’ve heard about driving while Black ... Can you not knock on the door while Black? It’s almost like you can’t exist.”
In The Anarchy of Black Religion: A Mystic Song, J. Kameron Carter, a scholar of religion, English, gender, and African American studies, frames the current reality of modern Black suffering as “antiblackness,” or in his own words, “the settler colonial antiblackness of the religion of whiteness.” For Carter, antiblackness is the performance of a racial liturgy. This may sound strange to some readers — how can racism be religious, or liturgical? But what Carter is getting at is that there is a pattern — a ritual — to white violence against Black people. Lester’s shooting of Yarl was just one incident of this racial liturgy playing out. The murder of Jordan Neely by Daniel Penny in a New York subway car is another. They are all sacrifices on the altar of whiteness.
Following mandatory morning prayer services, some recuperandos (“recovering persons”) clean São João del-Rei APAC prison in eastern Brazil.
WHEN GRAZIELA MARIANO'S former partner found out that she was in a relationship with someone else, he flew into a rage and attacked her. “We lived together for 13 years. He didn’t accept the breakup,” the 34-year-old Brazilian said. In defending herself, she ended up killing him.
Investigators eventually traced his death back to her. Mariano is waiting for her final sentence behind bars in the eastern city of São João del-Rei. But this jail, run by the Brazilian nonprofit Association for Protection and Assistance of Convicts (APAC), is not an ordinary penitentiary. “Theoretically, we’re in prison. But we’re not handcuffed and there are no weapons,” Mariano said.
In the 68 facilities that the nonprofit manages across Brazil, APAC implements a model in which inmates run aspects of the prison themselves. They wear their own clothes, make their own food, and oversee security and discipline. Referred to as recuperandos (“recovering persons”), prisoners are called by their name rather than by a number. Mariano, a former trainee nurse, works at night distributing medicine to fellow prisoners.
Camila Kersul, a psychologist who offers support to the more than 400 inmates at APAC in São João del-Rei, said, “APAC is essentially about offering dignity to inmates. The idea is to save the person’s identity to boost their self-esteem.”
Created by a group of Brazilian Catholics in the early 1970s, the acronym originally stood for Amando o Próximo, Amarás a Cristo (“Loving thy neighbor, thou shalt love Christ”). Christianity remains at the heart of the nonprofit’s philosophy. “God is the source of everything,” reads the final guiding principle of APAC’s decalogue. Each section of an APAC prison has a prayer room with Bibles and a cross where inmates are encouraged to renew themselves and take time out for reflection when they feel overwhelmed.
Mariano was delighted to move to the APAC facility eight months ago. She spent more than a year in a traditional prison: “I was pepper-sprayed. Food came with cockroaches. It was chaos, and guards were very cruel.” Not once was she permitted to see her three children, ages 6, 9, and 15. In APAC prisons, family ties are part of a prisoner’s rehabilitation. “Here, I arrived on a Tuesday and on the Sunday, I saw my family,” she said.
Illustration by Shannon Levin
GROWING UP, I didn’t understand why boys obsessed over girls. “Oh, you will when you’re older,” my dad kept telling me into my early 20s. Only then did I confront what I should’ve known long ago: I’m gay — but not just gay. I am romantically, but not sexually, attracted to men. My father promised that (hetero)sexual desire came with manhood, so am I less of a man?
Many conservative Christian marital counselors and sex manualists have implied that the answer is “yes.” John Eldredge, author of Wild at Heart, wrote that men “come alive” when they have a “a beauty to rescue.” In The Act of Marriage, Tim and Beverly LaHaye wrote that men’s “need for romantic love is either nonexistent or minimal.” Willard F. Harley Jr., in His Needs, Her Needs, wrote that sex is the “first thing [men] can’t do without.” Stephen Arterburn and Fred Stoeker, in Every Man’s Battle, wrote that “maleness” is heterosexual desire. Their message is clear: Sex is essential to God’s vision for manhood.
But every person can live a full, godly life without sex and romance, whether one has desires for both, either, or neither. For many asexual believers, both secular and so-called Christian understandings of sexuality have been insufficient and harmful to them — and to everyone. Perhaps understanding asexuality can lead Christians toward a more inclusive, beautiful, and faithful set of sexual ethics.
Illustration by Alberto Miranda
EVERY MONTH, TERRY KELLY sends a “rent” check to the Duwamish Tribe on behalf of Quest Church in Seattle, where Kelly serves as senior director of finance.
The church owns the property where it holds services. But the congregation’s monthly payment acknowledges and honors the Duwamish people and other original inhabitants of the land the church occupies, people who have never been “justly compensated for their land, resources, and livelihood,” as the Duwamish “real rent” program puts it.
Members of Quest Church are among the many people of faith who are reimagining the narrative of money in our world today.
The early Christian church was clear in its teachings that money was intended to be used for the benefit of the broader community, not for individual enrichment. But for centuries, and particularly since the Protestant Reformation, the institutional church has more often contributed to ideologies and illusions that reinforce the American form of hypercapitalism. And while money remains a highly visible reality in our everyday existence, our lived stories around money often go uninterrogated.
In America, our views about money tend to be very individualized. We ask questions such as: How is my money going to work for me? Will I have enough to pay bills or retire comfortably? What is my purchasing power? Even the story churches tell is often limited in scope, reduced to teaching about tithes, offerings, building funds, and missions giving. In some instances, we might see positive moves around personal budgeting and reducing debt. But church conversations about money are often left in the realm of personal finance.
cosmaa/iStock
TWO YEARS AGO I was introduced to De’Amon Harges, an expert in asset-based community development, by a mutual friend in Kansas City, who arranged to connect us due to our common pursuit of neighborhood flourishing. Harges described himself in his bio as a “roving listener.” When I later met him via Zoom, our conversation began with Harges saying: “José, tell me a story about yourself and your gifts.” I felt like I was being recruited into an ensemble of action heroes.
I responded by sharing my passion for being a collaborator and connector who supports people and neighborhood institutions around personal and collective flourishing. Our conversation was imbued with a cosmic energy as we swapped stories about our purpose in the world, as manifested through our purpose in the ’hood. Harges’ sacred curiosity made me feel buoyant, even seen and heard. In Harges, I connected with someone who bore witness to my gift in the world, and I was blessed to be awake to his gift when presented to me.
Ultimately, we live in a society that makes visible those gifts it deems most valuable. One only needs to search through the cultural happenings in New York City this fall. For instance, the New York Philharmonic hosts a stellar lineup of some of the best symphony orchestras in the world. In corporate America, CEOs will work to ensure their companies finish the last quarter well, to receive bonuses that average 74 percent of their annual salary. And paparazzi will chase Hollywood stars to produce tabloid fodder, showing how gifted people can be center stage even at our checkout counters.
Golden Sikorka/iStock
IF YOU THOUGHT Job had it bad, consider for a second the trials of Travis Dardar.
Dardar was born a Houma Indian in Isle de Jean Charles in Louisiana — whose residents are the first Americans that the federal government has officially designated as climate refugees, as it bought out their land before the sea could swallow it. So Dardar moved upstream to Cameron, La., and resumed his life as a fisherman — until an out-of-state company built a truly giant liquified natural gas (LNG) export terminal half a mile away and announced plans for another, 350 feet from his house. This time it was the fossil fuel company that bought him out, and so he’s moved yet further upstream — a man chased not once but twice from his home by the scourge of hydrocarbons.
That LNG buildout now underway in the Gulf and elsewhere — there are seven of these terminals operational already, with plans for 20 more — is the most extreme example of fossil fuel expansion in the U.S., even though it’s mostly flown under the radar. The fight against the absurd Willow oil project in Alaska, for instance, became a TikTok viral sensation, and millions of people signed petitions; but bad as it is, Willow will produce 1/20th of the carbon emissions associated with just one of the planned new LNG terminals, the CP2 project in Dardar’s old home of Cameron.
President Joe Biden blew it on Willow, breaking his pledge to block new drilling on federal lands, and it may endanger his hopes with young voters next year. Luckily for him, he gets another chance with these LNG projects, many of which are currently awaiting a certificate that they’re in the “public interest” from Biden’s Department of Energy.
Jun/iStock
AMONG TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS today, perhaps none is imbued with more hope—or more hype—than artificial intelligence (AI). Its proponents, such as billionaire technologist Marc Andreessen, claim it will literally “save” the world. Critics (see Kate Crawford’s Atlas of AI ) claim it is, in many ways, built on misunderstanding, exploitation, and deceit. But nearly everyone agrees that AI is a powerful tool that presents us with profound, and profoundly moral, challenges.
While Christianity offers a wealth of wisdom concerning moral and ethical behavior, materialist perspectives (a philosophy in which all facts are reducible to physical processes), which function as “articles of faith” in modern technical circles, have become the acceptable rhetorical scaffolding for “ethical” AI. For many, materialist perspectives deny the existence of God and any idea of eternal consequences but seek to compel people—and their technologies—to behave ethically, nonetheless.
While a strongly worded what is a good start, only a robust why can compel humans to want to be good, and only a robust how can enable them to do so. This is where materialism begins to falter, and Christianity can enter the debate with authority. The Christian faith acknowledges God as the originator, motivator, and sustainer of righteousness, asserting that moral behavior is the fruit, not the root, of a righteous life. It challenges us to look beyond a humanistic idea of ethics and toward a creative and abundant notion of goodness that cannot be accomplished by our own will or power. As AI has grown increasingly powerful and we have seen a proliferation of applications, particularly with large language models achieving nearly “human-level” performance, some tech leaders, perhaps sensing the difficulty of controlling their own creations, have called for “a pause on giant AI experiments.” Academic literature is rife with serious concerns on racism in AI development, theft of creative content, development of autonomous weapons, and more. At least one tech leader, Microsoft’s Brad Smith, perhaps mindful that AI ethics is too heavy a lift for technologists alone, has invited religious voices into the conversation.
San Carlos Apache leader Wendsler Noise Sr. is protesting copper mining on sacred land in the Oak Flat area of the Tonot National Forest in Arizona.
LONG-DISTANCE RUNNING has long been part of Apache traditional lifeways. For Wendsler Nosie Sr., it is a core expression of prayer and communion with the Earth.
In October 1990, the then 31-year-old tribal chair of the San Carlos Apache Reservation ran more than 60 miles in two days as prayerful resistance to the destruction of sacred sites at Mount Graham in Arizona. Two years earlier, Sen. John McCain had turned over Mount Graham to the University of Arizona to install telescopes. Nosie’s prayer run was part of a wider Apache and environmentalist movement to stop destruction of the mountain for the observatory project.
Nosie also was promoting a revival of his traditional Apache spirituality. The prayer run helped him “realize so much about our identity, where we originated and the sacredness of what makes us who we are.” Nosie went on to establish Apaches for Cultural Preservation and the Spirit of Mountain Runners, hosting twice-yearly community prayer runs. Grounded in ceremony, these runs begin at the site of the prison camp where the U.S. Army held Nosie’s ancestors in the 1890s. The destination of the summer run is Mount Graham; in winter, it is Oak Flat, another sacred site.
Oak Flat (Chi’chil Biłdagoteel) is a high desert valley in the mountains east of Phoenix, roughly 2,400 acres of federal land in Tonto National Forest that is sacred to Native Americans. Its fresh springs nurture oaks, making it a traditional acorn-gathering site for the Apache, and its canyons are lush with medicinal plants. The Apache have held ceremonies here for centuries. Nosie speaks reverently about Oak Flat as a place where his people have conversations with angels.
Sinéad O'Conner (1966-2023), an Irish songwriter, singer, and activist, was ordained as a priest and later converted to Islam. The quote is from her rendition of "Oró sé Do Bheatha 'Bhaile" on the album Global Sounds 3. Illustration by Hazel P. Mason
For a decade or so, beginning in the 1970s, members of the intentional Christian community that founded Sojourners magazine practiced a form of economic sharing we called the “common pot” — all our income was pooled for the good of the whole community. In doing so, we sought to model ourselves after the practices of the early Christian church, the first followers of Jesus, as described in Acts 2 and 4 — “All who believed were together and had all things in common” (Acts 2:44); “Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common” (Acts 4:32).
Illustration by Guang Lim
WETLANDS PLAY AN essential role in a healthy ecosystem, providing habitat for many species of plants and animals, flood protection, water filtration, and a host of other benefits. But a Supreme Court ruling last spring, implemented by the Environmental Protection Agency in August, resulted in the removal of federal protection for much of the nation’s wetlands. The legal issues at stake in the ruling revolved around distinctions between whether waters must have a “significant nexus” or a “continuous surface connection” or be “directly adjacent” to “traditional interstate navigable waters” to be federally protected by the Clean Water Act. But for the judges who threw out these protections, the case wasn’t just about legal hairsplitting. Nor was it just about conservative and libertarian opinions about the primacy of private property, small government, or weakening regulations.
At its heart, the court’s decision pivoted around a theological question: Does water — does God’s creation — have intrinsic value? Is it something to respect and protect for its own sake, and the sake of the ecosystem as a whole? Or is water’s worth found only in its utilitarian value — as a resource for human use, a source of energy or a means of transportation — and therefore subject to sacrifice on the altar of private enterprise and development?
ANIRUDH / Unsplash
IN 2012, a group of scientists from the University of Washington discovered Y chromosomes in the autopsied brains of female cadavers. Finding so-called male DNA in cis women’s bodies certainly complicates our notions of gender! But the focus then was on introducing the sci-fi-sounding concept of fetal microchimerism. Fetal cells, we learned, can remain integrated at the genetic level in someone’s body long after the fetus or baby is not. These cells can be passed on to future siblings, thus embedding visceral relations within our bodies that even the most adept family-systems theorist would struggle to disentangle.
The scientific community labeled this a discovery. But for anyone already skeptical of the mind-body dualisms in Western culture, this was simply science catching up with how we already experience our ancestral relations. Intergenerational wisdom and trauma aren’t simply intellectual concepts. Rather, our ancestors’ presence in our lives connects at sites where body, spirit, mind, and soul inextricably intertwine. And these sites are in desperate need of some decolonizing attention if we’re to reclaim our ancestral relations in our practices of Christian faith. Of course, that might not be something we all want to do. But this month, I’ll engage the lectionary readings through this lens to see what questions and insights might arise. And I’ll do so with the hope that our wide, wondrous communion of saints will read along with us.
Illustration by Lauren Wright Pittman
SEVERAL OF THIS month’s lectionary readings deal with the tensions of navigating wrongdoing, judgment, vengeance, and forgiveness. They call readers to forgive — and forgive again: not just once, twice, or seven times, but at least 77 times and counting (see Matthew 18:22).
These texts have been used throughout history to trap people in positions of disempowerment, abuse, and enslavement. Consider, for example, how victims of intimate partner violence have been pressured to forgive and return to their abusers, who then proceed to hurt them again. Or how entire marginalized communities are expected to “get over it,” whether that is the colonization of Turtle Island, enslavement, or generations of misogynist, queer- and transphobic policies, laws, and violence. In light of the rampant misuse of these texts, we’re right to be wary of biblical interpretations for how to handle conflict that reinforce domination. The texts tend not to deal directly with inherent interpersonal and structural power dynamics. We must do that work ourselves. Any of us preaching the lectionary this month must also be careful.
Attending to the power dynamics of these passages doesn’t mean we dismiss them as useless. Rather, such attention helps us discern how these texts invite and bear witness to God’s presence in processes of interpersonal, intergenerational, and even international healing. They call us to attend to what our own pain has to teach us and to seek hope through community life. And they promise that throughout our attending, God will abide — waiting patiently to see us through.
Illustration by Melanie Lambrick
AFTER THE SOUTHERN Baptist Convention announced that women cannot be pastors, Sunday mornings have taken a new form across the nation. People are seeing the potential of an uninterrupted two-day weekend for the first time and relishing the freedom.
In clarifying its stand on women in leadership — that Baptists won’t stand for it — the SBC suddenly confirmed what groggy teenagers have been telling their parents for generations — namely, that sleeping in might be a better idea than attending a church where females are only needed for child care and potlucks.
In fairness, when the SBC committee — composed almost entirely of men — made the recommendation, it was mainly to free up parking. The SBC is the largest Protestant denomination in the country (high five!), and what better way to open more spaces than by telling half of humanity they’re not appreciated?
Illustration by Ric Carrasquillo
Dome of the rock
dome of the belly
every diaphragm
its own firmament
waters above
from waters below
eyeglasses flecked with salt spots
remnants of our oceans
You Could Make This Place Beautiful: A Memoir, by Maggie Smith / Atria/One Signal Publishers
OUT OF DARKNESS, the Lord lit a flame — then shaped humans by the glow and placed them in a garden, charging them to tend it and make it beautiful. In her new memoir, poet Maggie Smith promises that this is possible: You Could Make This Place Beautiful.
Smith explores her rise to fame after the publication of “Good Bones,” deemed the “official poem of 2016” by Public Radio International and the source of her memoir title. In the poem she writes, “Life is short and the world / is at least half terrible, and for every kind / stranger, there is one who would break you, / though I keep this from my children. I am trying / to sell them the world. Any decent realtor, / walking you through a real shithole, chirps on / about good bones: This place could be beautiful, / right? You could make this place beautiful.”
According to Smith, her rise in popularity contributed to the end of her marriage. In her memoir, she shares how she forged her way back to herself. She realized her marriage was structured around patriarchal gender roles: She’d spent years of her adult life with a man who saw her writing as an activity for her “spare time,” outside of housework and child care. At the end of her marriage, Smith asked, “What do I have now? What do I have to hold on to?” She goes on, “When I looked down, I saw the pen in my hand.”
Pregnant While Black: Advancing Justice for Maternal Health in America, by Monique Rainford / Broadleaf Books
WHEN TORI BOWIE'S autopsy report was released in June, the cause of death stunned many track fans. The 32-year-old sprinter had won several medals at the 2016 Olympics. On May 2, Bowie was found dead in her apartment; the one-time “World’s Fastest Woman” had been eight months pregnant and was in labor when she died.
Bowie’s tragic death caused renewed attention to an ongoing health crisis affecting Black women in the United States. Despite being relatively young and in presumably good health, Bowie’s autopsy indicated she suffered from eclampsia and respiratory distress, pregnancy complications experienced by Black women in the U.S. at much higher rates than other demographics.
In Pregnant While Black: Advancing Justice for Maternal Health in America, Dr. Monique Rainford addresses this troubling truth: Black mothers in the U.S. are dying. They face more risks in pregnancy than white and non-white Hispanic women living in the United States.