Union Seminary
@UnionSeminary
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Where faith and scholarship meet to reimagine the work of justice.
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Last Seen Profiles
"Between 1880 to 1940, white Christians lynched nearly five thousand black men & women in a manner with obvious echoes of the Roman crucifixion of Jesus. Yet these 'Christians' did not see the irony or contradiction in their actions.”- James H. Cone, The Cross & The Lynching Tree
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Churches defended slavery.
Churches became apologists for Hitler.
Churches promoted segregation and apartheid.
Churches said women shouldn't preach.
To all who grieve today, remember that churches don't always act in accordance with God's will. Sometimes, they defy it.
#GC2019
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Tonight, Jesus is a child torn from their parents, weeping in a cage.
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1. It's the
#FourthofJuly
, and there's perhaps no better time to discuss Christian nationalism. So, let's talk.
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James Cone was not just a professor. He was a prophet—a theological giant who shook the foundations of Christianity, dragging us miles closer to justice.
He showed the world that the gospel cannot be separated from the push for black freedom—that black liberation is God’s story.
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"I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me." - Matthew 25:43
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1. A word about biblical infallibility:
This weekend, we received much damnation from fundamentalists over our denial of scriptural inerrancy. It's understandable, because once you relinquish conviction that the Bible is *literally* God's word, faith becomes a messier affair.
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1. Though much-analyzed, it's not discussed enough how parishioners' reservations about
@realDonaldTrump
hinge around personal behavior (adultery, affairs, language, etc.), not systemic sin.
This reveals a broader crisis within Christianity.
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"Between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ I recognize the widest possible difference." - Frederick Douglass
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3. But here's the truth: You can't talk about
#GoodFriday
with any kind of moral relevance—any understanding of how Christ's crucifixion occurs all around us—without discussing police shootings, without condemning the murder of black bodies by agents of the state.
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The decisions of prisons to ban Union visiting professor Michelle Alexander's masterpiece, "The New Jim Crow," is an intolerable abuse of power.
If you haven't read it (first of all, read it), TNJC explores mass incarceration's use as a tool of white supremacy. /1
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5. Christ was crucified in the bodies of Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Freddie Gray, Rekia Boyd, Michael Brown, John Crawford, Amadou Diallo, Walter Scott, Akai Gurley, Eric Garner, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile.
In every state-sanctioned death, we see Jesus' own broken body.
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11. Christians must speak up—and white Christians in particular must protest, organize, and pressure legislators to stop police shootings. Otherwise, tears shed at a
#GoodFriday
service ring frightfully hollow when paired with silence in the face of modern crucifixions.
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4. The Bible isn't primarily concerned with personal morality. Too often it's commandments are reduced to "how one can live a moral life," when, really, Scripture is far more concerned with how a society cares for the most vulnerable. It's not "What do I do," but "What do we do."
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"Poverty is not a law of nature. Homelessness is not dictated by the laws of physics. They’re dictated and created by ourselves. We have decided to accept these things, and we can decide to not accept them anymore." -
@AOC
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Today in chapel, we confessed to plants. Together, we held our grief, joy, regret, hope, guilt and sorrow in prayer; offering them to the beings who sustain us but whose gift we too often fail to honor.
What do you confess to the plants in your life?
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2. Just as Cone notes, "The conspicuous absence of the lynching tree in American theological discourse and preaching is profoundly revealing," so too is theological condemnation of racist police shootings also conspicuously missing—particularly in white churches.
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6. Indeed, Jesus would have much to say watching white evangelical leaders praying over a President who tears immigrant children from their parents, and it would not words of praise and accolade.
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"But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense." - Luke 24:11
BREAKING NEWS: Arizona GOP Sen.
@JeffFlake
, who was undecided on Brett Kavanaugh, says he will vote to confirm the Supreme Court nominee
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4. The crucifixion is not an ancient, historical event. We witnessed its horror again, two weeks ago, when Stephon Clark was shot 20 times in his own backyard for the unforgivable crime of holding a cell phone.
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5. All of this isn't just empty theology, it's a fundamental perversion of the faith started by a man executed by the state for condemning its abuses, and for decrying the complicity of religious authorities who allied themselves to political power instead of God's justice.
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10. It's a sin to deprive people of healthcare. It's a travesty to steal from poor people to line rich pockets. It's abominable to lock migrants in cages, to rip their babies from their arms. When Christians can't see this, it's because they haven't been taught the gospel.
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“We must stop using ‘middle class’ as a code word for white people, when the reality is that there are working class black people, and brown people, and white people, and *everybody’s* struggling to live.” -
@RevDrBarber
#PoorPeoplesCampaign
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We live in a time when religious hypocrisy is increasingly recognized by a secular popular culture – a time when too many Christians worship a sinful empire and have abandoned Jesus. We still believe, with all our hearts, that a moral revival can remove men like you from power.
We live in a time when traditional values, even religious conviction, are increasingly marginalized by a secular popular culture – a time when it's become acceptable, even fashionable, to malign religious belief. I still believe with all my heart that FAITH in America is rising.
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“Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.” - Sojourner Truth
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We have no trouble finding God: God is imprisoned in concentration camps that charlatans like
@robertjeffress
blasphemously call God’s will.
Trump-loving pastor
@robertjeffress
says
@UnionSeminary
is a "liberal seminary that is filled with liberal professors who couldn’t find God if their life depended on it.”
It's great to see fundies feeling they need to fight with progressive Christians!
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6. The holes in Christ's hands and feet are reflected in Stephon Clark's beautiful, God-given form, which Sacramento police officers desecrated so egregiously that Muslim leaders were unable to ritually bathe him—officers who then had the audacity to handcuff his lifeless body.
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5. And on those questions, the biblical message is clear: End economic exploitation of poor people, liberate captives, heal the sick, welcome strangers. It's why Amos decries leaders who "sell the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals."
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Belief that non-Christians will be forever damned simply does not align with worshipping a loving, just God.
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Woe to those who sacrifice children on gun culture’s bloody altar. This is beyond idolatry, just evil.
Watch sitting US congressmen and NRA reps passionately defend arming 4-year-olds in school. No, really. This is where we are.
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Peace is still an option. Peace is always an option. More than that, it’s God’s command to us all.
Don’t listen to any voice that says war is now inevitable. Do everything you can to prevent it.
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James Cone’s “eloquent portrayal of Christ’s blackness shattered dominant white theological paradigms, and ignited a wave of subsequent American liberation theologies.”
Click here to read about his incredible life and work.
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"King Nebuchadnezzar made a golden statue...[and sent] for all the officials of the provinces, to assemble and come to the dedication.
[Then the King proclaimed], 'Whoever does not fall down and worship shall immediately be thrown into a furnace of blazing fire.'” - Daniel 3
JUST IN: President Trump tells Fox & Friends that he thinks NFL players should "have to stand proudly" for the national anthem, and suggests that they "shouldn't be in the country" if they do not stand.
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12. It's time for all Christians who still worship God, not country, to stand up and decry these crimes in God's own name—to call out those who pervert Jesus' ministry by using him to bless a regime that desecrates everything Christ stands for.
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15. Because, if the gospel means anything, it calls us to work together to bring God's future just a little bit closer. And any president who actively conspires against this call commits far graver sin than any interpersonal abuse or failure.
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8. Because, just as Jesus' arrest and public execution were meant to silence a movement resisting imperial oppression, police killings have become a tool for terrorizing communities of color.
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“Pride always cometh before destruction. And what is racism if not pride, and greed, and self-worship. It is idolatry.” -
@RevDrBarber
#PoorPeoplesCampaign
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We invite you to a worship service using the music and life of Beyoncé as a tool to cultivate empowering conversation about Black women—their lives, bodies, and voices—and create an experience of story, scripture, and song that calls for the liberation of all people.
Now in NYC!
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7. Just as no one was arrested for killing Jesus—just as the lynching tree became a tacit part of American governance for decades—so too does the state habitually refuse to hold those guilty of modern crucifixion responsible for their actions.
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Jesus didn’t say a word about human sexuality.
In his first sermon, he reports that he is sent to proclaim good news to poor people, free prisoners, heal folks and lift oppression.
Perhaps it isn’t Episcopalians who are treating Christianity superficially.
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10. Slavery, apartheid, eugenics, segregation, and countless wars have all been defended in God's name by Christians so blindly loyal to their nation that they spat upon God's commandments.
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We always have to act as if revolution were possible, as if it were possible to change the world.” - Angela Davis
#SpiritOfJustice
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7. When Christians declare fealty to empire, we forget that our first and only calling is to be faithful to God. Then, when empire abuses people on the margins—the community Jesus was born into and people who Jesus loved—the costs of this devilish discipleship become clear.
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9. If our government and wider culture truly found these deaths abhorrent, we would take the necessary steps to prevent them. We would convict the officers responsible.
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First and foremost, the wall is an idol—best understood in the context of belief, not public policy. It is a shrine to hatred and fear; xenophobia given shape and worshipped.
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10. Instead,
@PressSec
—echoing the words of those who condoned lynching—called racist police shooting "a local matter." Juries rarely convict even when officers *are* tried. And so the crucifixion plays out in our streets again, and again, and again.
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We are excited to announce that
@CornelWest
, one of the nation’s most esteemed civil rights activists and scholars, will be rejoining the Union staff.
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After the United Methodist Church's decision, the pain in our community was palpable; we knew we had to respond. We could talk about how homophobic theology is damaging. We could condemn bigotry masquerading as God-talk. But that’s not the story we see every day at Union.
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11. Today, Christian nationalists have become some of the staunchest defenders of our President's patently un-Christian oppression—abusing and dehumanizing immigrants, demonizing Muslims, and openly supporting white supremacist policy.
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2. Though this sinful confluence is particularly pronounced today, the truth is that broad swathes of American Christianity have united worship of God and empire. While extreme patriotism is already idolotrous, many Christians take spiritual allegiance even further.
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14. That's the other part of the Christian witness absent in Luverne: We don't have to wait until we die to start building God's kindom.
We can pass policy that guarantees healthcare for everyone. We can ensure no one goes hungry. We can open our borders to all who need asylum.
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"What you're seeing and what you're hearing is not what's happening." -
@realDonaldTrump
"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final most essential command." - George Orwell, 1984
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8. Jesus promises we will know false prophets by their fruits and, in the case of Christian nationalism, the fruits are all-too-painfully apparent.
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13. God promises more radical salvation than a mansion in the sky.
God talks of swords turned to plowshares, spears to pruning hooks; God promises that the first shall be last, and the last shall be first; God dreams of a world in which all have enough—and all have a place.
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3. This is quite vivid in churches that proudly display the American flag in their sanctuary, flying high over Bibles and baptismal fonts. Some even recite the pledge of allegiance during worship, swearing fealty to country in a place that ought to be reserved for the divine.
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@sallyryan5925
“He has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free.” - Jesus, Luke 4:18
Sounds like justice to us.
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4. However, Christian nationalism runs far deeper than just these overt displays of patriotic fervor. It's found in theology that declares the United States uniquely blessed by God, in the invocation of Romans 13 to sanctify state crimes, or talk of our "Christian nation."
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Queer people are fearfully and wonderfully made in God’s image.
Seminaries that don’t welcome and celebrate LGBTQ students shut out the divine from their midst.
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13. if you're interested in reading more to better understand Christian nationalism, we commend
@jackmjenkins
' wonderful series for
@thinkprogress
—which both chronicles its history and examines its present manifestations.
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9. And so—in looking at the Trump presidency—we should be rightfully appalled by his lying, abuse of women in his life, disparaging remarks about vulnerable people. But, Christians should also be outraged by policy that violates Christ.
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"Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people."
#BibleLiteracy
Numerous states introducing Bible Literacy classes, giving students the option of studying the Bible. Starting to make a turn back? Great!
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2. It's easier to simply believe that the Bible is a plain record of the divine, that it clearly and concisely states what Christians should believe. In a world that feels so chaotic, biblical infallibility can provide distinct comfort.
But comfort and truth aren't synonymous.
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Misguided sociological, psychological and political theories have long fostered biblical misinterpretation. We wish to address untruths this document proclaims: Any treatise that says social justice is incidental to the gospel badly misunderstands both.
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.
@realDonaldTrump
can shout “In God we trust,” but his policies still make a mockery of God’s call for equality and justice.
Shrouding one’s sins under a cloak of divinity doesn’t erase them, it simply adds blasphemy to the list.
#SOTU
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"Any message that is not related to the liberation of the poor in society is not Christ's message." - Rev. Dr. James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation
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14. Fortunately, that god was never God—simply an idol worshipped by people who valued print and ink over divine justice. Letting go of that idolatry is the first step towards truly knowing God, to developing faith that honors both humanity and the divine.
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“White people have to understand that they aren’t allies. This is their problem. The burden is on white churches to speak truth to the people in their pews. If the risk is losing their jobs—well, the risk for black people has always been greater than that.” - Kelly Brown Douglas
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7. But by no means should an admission of fallibility be read as an admission that the Bible is worthless, or a denial that God speaks through Scripture. Instead, it simply opens the door to a far deeper, nuanced and complex faith.
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Christ was executed for stirring up trouble.
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9. Perhaps the darkest chapter in Christian nationalism is the shameful capitulation of most of the Church in Nazi Germany, but history is rife with examples of invoking God to justify atrocity.
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We’ll be sharing extended reflection on his revolutionary ministry in the days and weeks to come. For now, we dwell in overwhelming grief.
Dr. Cone, the fire you ignited in generations of students continues to burn stronger than ever. We will carry on your work. Rest in power.
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Not only was Jesus arrested and executed for breaking the law, he specifically targeted practices that abused poor and marginalized people. To suggest that Christ would comply with laws that jail migrants is patently absurd.
Paula White: "Jesus did live in Egypt for three-and-a-half years. But it was not illegal. If He had broken the law then He would have been sinful and He would not have been our Messiah."
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11. Instead, they've been taught individual piety that masquerades as Christianity. You can see this revealed in views of salvation. Jewell Killough describes heaven as "whatever makes me happy." Brett Green remarks, he "thinks about it all the time, what it will be like."
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3. The truth is that the biblical books were written by humans. They represent the fruits of people grappling with God, and what it means to be human, for centuries—in all the complexity those questions necessarily entail.
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The funeral for Rev. Dr. James H. Cone will be held on Monday, May 7, 11:00 a.m. at The Riverside Church. The service will be live streamed for anyone unable to attend in person.
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7. It's why we find clear commands to treat citizens and non-citizens equally, why we're asked to cleanse all debt in Jubilee every seventh year, why God's gravest condemnation is generally reserved for tyrants who oppress the people they're meant to serve.
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9. But, on a deeper level, it means opening up faith to doubt. It means acknowledging that, when it comes to God, there are no "easy answers." There's no cheat sheet that you can simply refer to, to read God's voice—clear as day. Letting go of that can be painful.
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8. It's why, in Jesus' first sermon, he says he's sent "to proclaim good news to the poor...freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free."
And, it's why Jesus was executed for opposing an empire that subjugated his people.
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13. Moreover, relinquishing infallibility is the only means by which you can fully square Scripture with a loving, just God. A god that would condemn LGBTQ people for their love, or consign women to subservience, is not a god worth worshipping.
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One year later, our community still mourns the loss of Rev. Dr. James Hal Cone, and his prophetic fire:
“Any theology in America that fails to engage white supremacy and God’s liberation of black people from that evil is not Christian theology but a theology of the Antichrist.”
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A word for the crisis on our border:
“This is what the Lord says: Do what is just and right. Rescue from the hand of the oppressor the one who has been robbed. Do no wrong or violence to the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place.”
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6. It's why Isaiah declares:
"The Lord enters into judgment
against the elders and leaders of his people:
'It is you who have ruined my vineyard;
the plunder from the poor is in your houses.'" (Isa 3:14)
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"God can use the rejected to revive a nation!" -
@RevDrBarber
Last week, more than a thousand
#PoorPeoplesCampaign
delegates from 40+ states gathered in D.C. Watch and share Rev. Barber's charge: The people power has rejected will ignite the moral revolution our country needs.
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12. Sheila rubs her knee and says, "In heaven I won't have any pain...I'm going to be in my kitchen...I think it's going to be beautiful to see all the appliances."
But if heaven is about a Mixmaster, then heaven in meaningless.
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To politicians who support racist gerrymandering and voter suppression, “if you are afraid to participate in free and fair elections, get a new job!
...And you should not lose the right to vote if you are incarcerated!” -
@SenSanders
#PPCMoralCongress
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"Any theology in America that fails to engage white supremacy and God's liberation of black people from that evil is not Christian theology but a theology of the Antichrist." - Rev. Dr. James H. Cone
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“Poverty has an antidote: Money.
Poverty is not an absence of character, it’s an absence of cash.” -
@AndrewYang
#PPCMoralCongress
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So, if you're poking fun, we'd ask only that you also spend a couple moments asking:
Do I treat plants and animals as divinely created beings?
What harm do I cause without thinking?
How can I enter into new relationship with the natural world? /9
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God: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, their spears into pruning hooks.”
Democrats say we have guns in America because of “corruption”. No, we have guns because it’s our God-given right enshrined in the Constitution.
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1. It is altogether fitting that a memorial to the thousands of lynched black Americans should open the same week as Rev. Dr. James H. Cone's death; no theologian did more to condemn these atrocities—to expose in their deaths Christ's own crucified body.
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4. Moreover, even the decision about which books would be included in the Bible was a human choice—one that didn't solidify until centuries after Jesus died: They by no means represent all the early Christian texts. (Dr. Hal Taussig's A New New Testament collects many others.)
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"Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all." - Toni Morrison, Beloved
Thank you for teaching us. May you be reunited with and enveloped by the love you lived.
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If this administration believes all children were made in the image of God, why did we steal thousands of children from their families, then disregard the ensuing trauma?
#SOTU
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6. There is so much humanity in the Bible, and humans are—by nature—fallible and often blinded by our own cultural prejudices and blindspots. That was every bit as true for the early Church as it is for the modern Church.
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"God has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor...freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free." - Jesus
Sounds like a pretty progressive platform to us.
I wish that "progressive" Christians would just admit that they are not Christian and openly disavow the faith. Then there would be less confusion. And perhaps if the apostates confronted their own apostasy, then there would be a chance at repentance and redemption.
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A family internment camp is still an internment camp.
It's still a gross abuse of human rights, and it's still a violation of God's will.
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