police violence
An attendee holds a program while exiting a Feb. 1 memorial service for Tyre Nichols who died after being beaten by Memphis Police officers. REUTERS/Ronda Churchill
Sometimes our nation and world are so full of injustice, loss, and pain that words fail us and our spirit can find no rest. We don’t even know what to say, how to pray, and where to begin to set right the many things that are so overwhelmingly wrong. The vicious murder of Tyre Nichols feels like one of those moments.
Courtesy Joy Oladokun.
“I don’t think we talk enough about the delight in sexuality, especially spiritually,” Oladokun told Sojourners. They also take inspiration from the spirit of the Last Supper, comparing queer love to communion and noting “there’s something kind of romantic about Jesus at a candle-lit dinner with a bunch of his bros being like, ‘I am this bread. I am this wine. I am what you can feed off of in this moment.’”
A local resident walks along the “Say Their Names” cemetery on the day former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minn., on April 20, 2021. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
By now the ritual is regrettably predictable. A public official approaches a podium emblazoned with an official seal, perhaps flanked by the flags of their city and state, and maybe the U.S. flag. Just outside the frame, the shutters of a dozen cameras snap, capturing the official’s somber expression and ever-so-gently bowed head.
Illustration by Molly Magnell
THE CHRISTIAN LIFE returns again and again to prayer. We pray by ourselves, and we pray with others. Worship draws us to the scriptures, with the psalter at the center of the Bible, which bears witness to the back-and-forth, the disagreement and commitment, the frustration and intimacy, of God’s communication with God’s people—a textual record of conversations across the ages.
With the guidance of these holy words, prayer transfigures us with divine communion, our lives caught up in the life of God. We find ourselves with the disciples when Jesus takes them up the mountain, where “he was transfigured before them” (Mark 9:2). We are Jesus’ companions. He welcomes us into a life of prayer, which is our union with God.
In After the Spirit, theologian Eugene Rogers uses the traditional language of church doctrine to describe this process of deification. “The Holy Spirit incorporates human prayer into the prayer of the Son to the Father.” In the biblical scene, we are standing there with Jesus on the mountain as the thick presence of heaven descends on him like a cloud (Mark 9:7). “Prayer is a transfiguration of human beings,” Rogers explains. This story is about our participation in the trinitarian life of God.
The Bible passages this month lead us from Epiphany to Lent, with Transfiguration Sunday as our transition from one season to the next. During Lent we open ourselves to how the light of Epiphany’s revelations about God exposes sin’s insidious powers in our lives and in the world.
Illustration by Dave McClinton
IF YOU EXPECT a column about art, you may have turned to the wrong page. Though I would very much like to be writing about aesthetics, I’m afraid I cannot do so outright. The problem is simple: Our world is on fire, has been for a very long time, and we can no longer afford to avoid the why. Our country looks in the mirror and cannot recognize its face because its self-concept is built on lies. To be an American, it seems, is to be in a state of constant dissociation. Perhaps that is the fine print in our social contract—mandated distance from our inner worlds and the violence we inflict on each other.
But, if we are constantly looking away from ourselves, what are we looking at instead? The answer is, again, simple. We—this “we” primarily composed of white people—have traded a clear vision of reality away for the tawdry allure of images. Put frankly, we worship a portrait of America that has not yet come into being.
In the last few weeks of August 2019, women in Mexico City joined the 'revolución diamantina’ (glitter revolution), expressing their anger over institutionalized violence against women. Armed with pink glitter, the protesters rallied in the streets, chanting,“They don’t protect us, they rape us.”
Image via TheNoxid / Flickr
Protestors have marched the streets of downtown Pittsburgh since Rose, 17, was fatally shot three times by an East Pittsburgh police officer as he ran from a vehicle, after it was stopped by police who were investigating a nearby shooting.
Image via Shutterstock/ Diego D. Diaz
Critics mock that success at football does not qualify Kaepernick to speak on social issues. Yet the athletes of the NFL have achieved their elite status through years of focus, passion and training in an industry that is inextricably tied to conceptions (right or wrong) of black and brown masculinity and success. They are probably more qualified than anyone to comment on the intersection of strength, fear, security, and vulnerability that undergird the state-sanctioned brutality in America’s streets.
Image via Vision Planet Media / Flickr
"This settlement is a step in that direction. We can never say or do anything to bring Terrence back," D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said in a statement. "But we can, and do, resolve to illuminate what went wrong and, with great determination, do what we can to ensure no family faces this pain."
Image via Ms Jane Campbell / Shutterstock
But more deeply than that, framing Terence’s last gasp of life in the texture of local challenges shows the frailty of black Tulsa’s dream of equal treatment. We need to ensure Terence does not become another note on a scale of the pain felt by countless black and brown lives. It’s only been seven months and the voices of those affected by this history have been diminished.
Image via Phase4Studios / Shutterstock.com
Police shot a black man who was taking care of an autistic patient who had wandered into the street, reports the Miami Herald.
On July 18, an unnamed officer shot the caretaker, Charles Kinsey, 47, in the leg with an assault rifle. Video footage taken before the shooting shows Kinsey lying on the ground with his hands in the air, telling his autistic patient to cooperate and lie on the ground as well. Kinsey was not badly injured and is scheduled to be released from the hospital July 21.
Image via 1000 Words / Shutterstock.com
As I looked through my Facebook newsfeed I saw many of my African-American friends asking, “How long, oh Lord?” This question is not just one we asked after Alton Sterling and Philando Castile were added to our great cloud of witnesses as the latest victims of racial violence, but this is a question our parents, grandparents, and generations have asked as they faced oppression.
Image via REUTERS/Rex Curry/RNS
Brian Williams is an African-American trauma surgeon at Dallas’ Parkland Hospital. He was in charge of Parkland’s emergency room July 7 when seven officers arrived.
He choked back tears as he described to The Washington Post how three officers died at the hospital: “I think about it every day, that I was unable to save those cops when they came here that night.”
Image via a katz / Shutterstock.com
The ambush came on the heels of the Dallas shooting, when five officers were killed during a protest against police violence. Baton Rouge was the city where police killed Alton Sterling on July 5.
Image via ChameleonsEye / Shutterstock.com
I didn’t know whether to stop. I turned the corner and noticed you first, before I noticed the police cars and the flashing lights and your car crammed full of stuff. You were standing there, jeans and hoodie. Hands in pocket and hood over your head. It was cold and you did not have on a coat. I was in my warm car, and you were standing in the January cold.
Image via Michael Dechev / Shutterstock.com
The killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile last week added fresh pain to the longstanding and unresolved crisis of police killings of black Americans.
Image via REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/RNS
President Obama strove to convey a message of solace and unity in the wake of an extraordinary week that rubbed raw issues of police safety and racial bias in policing, saying he believes Americans will come together to find common ground.
“As painful as the week has been, I fully believe that America is not as divided as people have suggested,” he said. People of all races and backgrounds are outraged by the killing of police officers in Dallas — even those protesting the police, he said. And the same people are angered by the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile.
Photo via a katz / Shutterstock
"Blood is crying from the ground and let it trouble the very soul of America until justice is a clear reality."
Screenshot via Lavish Reynolds / Facebook / CNN
Philando Castile, a black man from Minneapolis who was pulled over and shot by police July 6, has died, reports CNN.
One of the passengers, Castile’s girlfriend Diamond Reynolds, began filming the incident right after the shooting. The video shows Castile covered in blood and a police officer outside the car with gun drawn.
Image via SergeBertasiusPhotography/Shutterstock.com
“We believe in the value, power, and potential of training to produce more effective, more capable, and better police officers,” the Ferguson Commission wrote. I believe in this, too. And I believe that investing in a better police force may yield a future where “liking the police” is no longer a privilege, but the norm.