Martha Hennessy 6-23-2015
Image via Andrekart Photography/shutterstock.com

The school’s atmosphere, cultivated over the past nine months, has a magical effect on the 80 attending students. In a surprisingly short time, the commitment to creating a nonviolent learning environment has enabled at least thirty students to become literate.

Lisa Sharon Harper 6-23-2015
South Carolina state house

As the governor of the first state to secede from the Union, Haley treaded softly on Monday, explaining: Some “South Carolinians view the flag as a symbol of respect, integrity, and duty. They also see it as a memorial. A way to honor ancestors who came to the service of their state during time of conflict.” But, “for many others in South Carolina,” she continued, “the flag is a deeply offensive symbol of a brutally oppressive past.”

Haley explained that it is fine for individuals to fly the Confederate flag on their own private property.

“But, the state house is different,” she declared.

Why is it different and what is the connection to the deaths of Walter Scott and The Emanuel Nine?

Rosie Scammell / RNS

Vatican officials on June 23 released a document on family values — a precursor to a major meeting in October — that underscores the ongoing tension between Pope Francis’ desire for a more “welcoming” church and the need to hew to long-standing tradition and doctrine.

“The Christian message should be conveyed using language that generates hope,” reads the 78-page working document , which compiles the responses of Catholics around the world on issues facing modern families.

Betsy Shirley 6-23-2015
Screenshot from "Armor of Light"

A lifelong anti-abortion activist, Schenck has impeccable evangelical credentials. Consequently, after the 2013 D.C. Navy Yard shooting left 13 people dead in his own neighborhood, Schenck risked losing those credentials — and possibly his career — as he publicly began to question the unholy alliance between God and guns that exists among many conservative evangelicals.

Though Schenck has already made a few public statements about his support for stricter gun control as part of his pro-life stance, he expects that The Armor of Light, released earlier this year, will cause him to lose "significant" financial support. 

Not that he minds.

Creative Commons / Katrina Barker Anderson / RNS

Nancy Ross was sitting next to Kate Kelly at an Ordain Women board meeting in Salt Lake City on June 23, 2014, when Kelly learned that she had been excommunicated from the LDS Church.

Kelly began to tear up at the email from her Mormon bishop, and soon most of the nine or so board members around the table were weeping as well.

“It was a truly awful day — with a lot of really big emotions,” Ross recalls. 

“A year later, it’s still an awful thing.”

Mark Silk 6-23-2015
REUTERS / Brian Snyder / RNS

The Confederate battle flag will not fly much longer on the grounds of the South Carolina state Capitol, where it has flown since it was dislodged from the Capitol itself 15 years ago.

The state’s political establishment wants it gone, and doubtless it soon will be. What is to be hoped is that its removal signals the end of the mythical republic for which it stands.

In the years after the Civil War, the battle flag became the emblem of the Religion of the Lost Cause, which white Southerners embraced not only to legitimate and ennoble their disastrous struggle to maintain their right to own other people, but also to create the myth of an antebellum golden age of genteel manners, Christian piety, and happy slaves.

Emanuel AME

There is a scripture that says we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against powers and rulers of the darkness. Within the nonviolent faith tradition it has always been clear that hate cannot drive out hate and evil cannot drive out evil, and so the Christians that were able to forgive the murder 48 hours after losing their loved ones is consistent with their faith Jesus said as he was being murdered by the state, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do." But this forgiveness should not be misinterpreted as a dismissing of the greater evil. Their forgiveness is also an act of resistance to the attempts to lay the blame for this horror at the feet of one man. If America is serious about this moment we cannot just cry ceremonial tears while at the same time refusing to support the martyred Reverend and his parishioners’ stalwart fight against the racism that gave birth to the crime.

the Web Editors 6-23-2015
PRRI / RNS

Sometimes they release studies about white people that just make you groan.

When “Americans” speak up and protest unfair treatment by the government, two-thirds (67%) of white Americans agree that it always makes our country better. But when “black Americans” speak up and protest unfair treatment by the government, white Americans’ approval drops to less than half (48%), all according to a study released by the Public Religion Research Institue (PRRI) on June 23 .

Seriously, white folks? Come on.

Jacqui Lewis 6-23-2015
Emanuel AME Church

We saw a gathered crowd, a makeshift memorial, flowers and ribbons with the names of the beloved on them. We five walked our pilgrimage, paid our respects separately and together. I spoke to people from Charleston, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Texas. They were predominantly white, but people of all races – children and old folk — weeping, hugging. It was church, y’all, like when at first everyone is not there and then they come.

As we talked to community people, tourists and pilgrims, we also talked to CBS, CNN, some British folk, a black man who covers black news. Reporters were intrigued by our multiracial and multi-faith, interracial and interfaith, LGBTQ and straight, coalition of women. We spoke into the cameras about how we represented a culturally and ethnically diverse American truth.

Cindy Brandt 6-23-2015
hand signal image

As a cross-cultural person, I am keenly aware of the vastly different ways we do life. I am a huge champion of creating space for diversity. However, leaning into our differences also serves to make universal aspects of humanity unmistakable. And one thing that binds us is our common experience of suffering. Our compassion and empathy for the suffering of others is powerful enough to break down the thickest walls of ideology.

I think about the areas of our most vehement disputes: the beginning of life (abortion), the end of life (capital punishment, end-of-life care), marriage and children (gay marriage, parenting wars), dignity of work and supporting the family (the economy) — and I see these issues radiate out of the struggle to be human. The pains that love brings to the human experiment threaten with small wedges of disagreement between us until we are fragmented mini-tribes with narrow dogmas.