“The Lord is my shepherd: I shall not want.”
Over the phone, Ran Limbu quotes the words of Psalm 23. He is the pastor of Christ Believer Nepali Church, a Bhutanese refugee church on the west side of Madison, Wis. This passage has come alive for him over the past decade while living in the United States of America. This verse has encouraged him to trust that God is his home even in his displacement.
By the end of this year, more than 50 countries — representing half of humanity — will have held national elections. Thinking about this statistic as an American helps put my own anxieties about the U.S. presidential elections in greater perspective. As Americans, we can easily be insular and self-centered, thinking that our nation’s political situation is exceptional and that we don’t need to be aware of what is happening in other countries. At the same time, we can also be unaware of the ripple effect that our own elections have on the rest of the world.
Faith-based migrant ministries in Texas are used to operating in tough circumstances, including finding the right resources, meeting migrant needs, and funding their day-to-day work. But recent legal challenges have left some Texas faith leaders uncertain about the future of their ministries.
Anyone who has spent even a second in a prison knows it’s hell. Growing up in church, I noticed people who participated in the church’s prison ministry were both respected and feared. Respected because they were doing what the writer of Hebrews admonishes believers to do regarding those in chains: Remember them as though you were in prison with them (13:3). But they were feared because many of them had actually been in prison. Rather than the prison system or the criminal legal system being classified as barbaric, it was the prisoners who were typically understood to be barbarians.
Joe Ingle has spent a lot of time in prison. Ingle is a writer and death row minister who has been active in prison ministry since the ’70s. A native of North Carolina and a graduate of Union Theological Seminary, Ingle has dedicated his life to being present with and advocating for the 1.9 million people incarcerated in the U.S., especially the more than 2,300 incarcerated people on death row.
Daneen Akers faced a dilemma: After moving away from fundamentalist Christianity, what books about God could she read to her kids? She went through the boxes in her parents’ basement, full of the books she’d grown up with — books that used exclusively male pronouns for God and talked about Jesus’ blood satisfying a debt owed for humanity’s sins. “The faith stories I had inherited, a lot of us had inherited, were just not sufficient. I wanted something expansive,” Akers said.
Sometimes I am haunted by Glennon Doyle’s forward to the late Rachel Held Evans’ book Searching for Sunday. Doyle begins: “Whenever I want to scare myself, I consider what would happen to the world if Rachel Held Evans stopped writing.” In 2019, about four years after those words were published, Evans died. She was 37, survived by her husband, two kids, and Christians around the world who found comfort in her faith-rooted advocacy for racial justice, LGBTQ+ rights, and egalitarianism.
Just a short walk from my home near Princeton University, students, faculty, staff, and community members have come together to demand the university divest from financial and military support of the state of Israel and release a public statement calling for a ceasefire in Gaza — one of many similar protests that have been happening at college campuses across the U.S. over the past two weeks. Stroll by the encampment at any given time, and you’ll see folks of all ages and races gathered together on blankets and tarps sharing crowdfunded hot meals as scholars address the group; kids play and others offer physical and spiritual care, or clean up the encampment grounds. You might hear community announcements, prayer, music, or, at times, chants like “disclose, divest / we will not stop / we will not rest.”
My “For You” page is dancing again. Coming off the release of Beyoncé’s country album, Cowboy Carter, the TikTokers have taken center screen and are imitating line dances in celebration of her new sound. Sheepishly, I have been attempting to join in. I don’t dance. Or I should say I do not dance well. I’ve never been classically trained, I’ve got two left feet, and I still have to silently mutter the steps to the electric slide to stay on beat. I’ve consistently struggled to find my rhythm, but I dance anyway.
The United Methodist Church voted this week to approve a petition affirming a right to abortion and pledging “solidarity with those who seek reproductive health care.” The vote was part of the UMC’s 2020 General Conference, which was delayed until 2024 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 1985, Chicago Mayor Harold Washington passed an ordinance prohibiting city workers from cooperating with immigration police to detain and deport undocumented migrants. With this ordinance, Chicago became a sanctuary city, joining other U.S. cities in resisting policies that criminalize migration. Almost 40 years later, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has used Chicago’s sanctuary status as an excuse to bus and fly thousands of migrants to the city from Texas, where he has instituted strict migration policies.
Since Texas began bussing and flying migrants to Chicago in 2022, the city has welcomed over 30,000 migrants. These migrants have endured terribly cold winters, undignified housing, and a city divided by feelings of frustration, indifference, and solidarity.