D.C.

Sarah Einselen 9-22-2022

Venezuelan migrants stand outside St. Andrew’s Church in Edgartown, Massachusetts, Sept. 14, 2022. Ray Ewing/Vineyard Gazette via Reuters.

When about 50 people found themselves stranded last week on Martha’s Vineyard, the island’s nonprofit social services agency called on local churches to help. “We rallied and did what any decent human being would do if strangers showed up,” local pastor Rev. Charlotte Wright told Sojourners this week.

Dhanya Addanki 8-08-2018

Image via Wikimedia Commons 

“This is a great time for two churches that have been impacted by racial division to come together through the symbols of prayer, communion, focus on love and justice rather than racial division and hatred,” Roberts said. 

Image via Shutterstock/Pamela Au 

“It's easy to catch a heat stroke from prolonged exposure to the sun and the humidity here in the district,” said Reginald Black, a homeless journalist and vendor for Street Sense, a local newspaper produced and distributed by homeless individuals.

Rebekah Fulton 5-15-2018

Photos from the Poor People's Campaign Launch in D.C.

Image via Adelle M. Banks / RNS

“Certainly, ending racism might seem like an aspiration but, like the very first disciples, we followers of Jesus are called to bear witness to something that the world cannot yet believe is possible,” said the Rev. Sharon Watkins, director of the NCC’s Truth and Racial Justice Initiative and the president of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). “We are called to say this can happen. Racism can end.”

Image via RNS/Emily McFarlan Miller

At a Fourth of July concert hosted by First Baptist Church Dallas at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., President Trump pledged never to forget the men and women who have served in the U.S. military — or the people of faith who put him in the White House.

“My administration will always support and defend your religious liberty,” Trump said at the event on July 1. “We don’t want to see God forced out of the public square, driven out of our schools, or pushed out of our civic life.”

Image via RNS/AU

After a quarter-century, the Rev. Barry Lynn is retiring as head of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

In court, in congressional hearings, and on cable television, Lynn has led the fight against school-sponsored prayer, religious symbols on public property, and any law that allows government to privilege people of faith.

the Web Editors 5-09-2017

Image via a katz/Shutterstock.com

As of May 5, according to the Boston Globe, 134 lawsuits have been brought against President Trump in federal court since his inauguration. This contrasts greatly with the number of lawsuits his three most recent predecessors faced at this point in their presidency: Obama met with 26 suits, Bush met with seven, and Clinton met with 15.

Bobby Ross Jr. 5-03-2017

Image via RNS/Bobby Ross Jr.

“Many of the findings of the commission’s year-long investigation were disturbing, and led commission members to question whether the death penalty can be administered in a way that ensures no innocent person is put to death,” according to the in-depth report.

Image via Reuters

A U.S. federal judge in Virginia ruled on March 24 that President Donald Trump's travel ban was justified, increasing the likelihood the measure will go before the Supreme Court, as the decision took an opposing view to courts in Maryland and Hawaii that have halted the order.

U.S. District Court Judge Anthony Trenga rejected arguments by Muslim plaintiffs, who claimed Trump's March 6 executive order temporarily banning the entry of all refugees and travelers from six Muslim-majority countries was discriminatory.

Image via RNS/Adelle M. Banks

The pro-Trump evangelicals suffer from a spiritual crisis, not a political one.

Moore has challenged the foundations of conservative evangelical political engagement because they desperately needed to be shaken. For 35 years, the old-guard religious right has uncritically coddled, defended, and promoted the Republican Party.

Image via RNS/Reuters/Andreas Solaro/Pool

As Pope Francis marks the fourth anniversary of his revolutionary papacy, the pontiff apparently finds himself besieged on all sides by crises of his own making: an open “civil war” in the Catholic Church and fears of schism, mounting opposition from the faithful, and a Roman Curia so furious with his reforms that some cardinals are plotting a coup to topple him.

Lilly Fowler 3-13-2017

Image via RNS/Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

On a cold rainy morning, members of the American Indian tribes shouted “Water is sacred” and “Keep it in the soil; can’t drink oil” as they marched toward the White House.

The March 10 protest against the Dakota Access pipeline included hundreds of Native Americans, some dressed in traditional feather headbands and ponchos.

They beat drums and danced as they made their way through the streets.

the Web Editors 2-14-2017

Image via Ryan Bodrick Beiler/Shutterstock.com

On Feb. 16 immigrants in Washington, D.C., plan to go on strike from work and other economic engagements, creating a “Day Without Immigrants,” just as immigrants in Wisconsin did on Feb. 13, reports the Washingtonian.

A flyer advertising the “Day Without Immigrants” calls for immigrants to avoid shopping, going to work, and eating at restaurants.

Image via Creative Commons/Dragan Tatic

As the only female Yazidi in the Iraqi Parliament, Dakhil fought tirelessly for international assistance to stop the violence, including sexual slavery, targeting her beleaguered people.

Now she has been awarded the Lantos Human Rights Prize in Washington, D.C. But she is unlikely to make the ceremony on Feb. 8, since President Donald Trump banned all travelers from Iraq.

Kimberly Winston 12-09-2016

Image via RNS

Winter isn’t coming — it’s already here. With it comes the hope — if not the time — to curl up under the covers, or by the fire, and read a good book. Here are seven titles you won’t find on the religion shelf at the bookstore, or library, but that nonetheless use religion and spirituality themes to propel the story.

Da’Shawn Mosley 11-10-2016

Image via Joseph Gruber/Shutterstock.com

Stop telling me to fight. Stop saying on your social media platforms, and in your blogs and your op-eds, that everyone should dust themselves off and get up and fix this. Stop saying that addressing this issue is everyone’s duty, because I can’t even begin to explain to you how far from the truth such a statement is.

But I’ll try. I will overcome my exhaustion and explain this to you as clearly as I can, and you can thank me later, if you’re so inclined. Let it be known that I like Edible Arrangements.

Da’Shawn Mosley 11-02-2016

Image via Debbie Allen's "Freeze Frame - Stop the Madness" Facebook

The project which Allen spoke of, titled Freeze Frame…Stop the Madness, is a work of theatre written, choreographed, and directed by Allen that combines cinema, dance, and music into a stage performance inspired by the issues of race and gun violence in America. Freeze Frame opened at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 27 and, on Oct. 24, Allen visited the Center for American Progress, in the nation’s capital, to discuss Freeze Frame’s creation and the impact she hopes the show will have on the U.S.

Image via Orhan Cam/Shutterstock.com

The City Council in the nation’s capital has overwhelmingly voted for a bill that would allow terminally ill people a medically assisted death.

That makes Washington, D.C., the sixth jurisdiction nationwide to approve what opponents often call “physician-assisted suicide.” The bill would legalize it for those who have six months or less to live, who do not suffer from depression, and who request the option several times.

Da’Shawn Mosley 10-03-2016

Da'Shawn Mosley/Sojourners

So there was a gloom and reverence with which I walked through the first three levels of the museum, and with which many of the people around me also seemed to travel. We were in the presence of ruins from days when black bodies were treated like cattle and felled like sugar cane crops. We were staring at the adornments of Ku Klux Klan members, at shards of glass from the 16th Street Baptist Church, and we were doing so only days after yet another police shooting of yet another unarmed black man. Death was in the air, and we were the bereaved.