In mid-May, violence between Gaza and Israel intensified to levels not seen for years, with Hamas shooting hundreds of rockets toward the Tel Aviv area and Israel retaliating with heavy strikes in the Gaza Strip. On May 20, Israel and Hamas agreed to a cease-fire, but during the 11 days of fighting, at least 243 people were killed in Gaza, including 66 children, and 12 people were killed in Israel, including two children.
Abortion. Guns. Religion. A Trump-fortified conservative majority is making its presence felt at the Supreme Court by quickly wading into high-profile social issues that have long been goals of the right.
For years, frustrated conservatives, including some justices, chided the court with its majority of Republican appointees for not going far enough on some issues and for passing on others altogether.
On the first Wednesday in May, as the centennial of the Tulsa massacre approached, Robert R. A. Turner stood outside Tulsa City Hall with his megaphone, as he does every week.
“Tulsa, you will reap what you sow, and that which you have done unto the least of these my children, Jesus said, you have done also unto me,” said Turner, 38, the pastor of Historic Vernon African Methodist Episcopal Church. “We come here to say, for your own benefit, you ought to do reparations not tomorrow, not even next week, not next month, not next year, but we demand reparations now!”
After a two-year prison sentence, Amber Bjornsson moved into a recovery home. She took a minimum wage job at a restaurant within walking distance of her transitional housing. But she still faced the substantial court fines she’d accumulated prior to her prison term.
“Everything in front of me was burnt by kerosene, and I had to get across it,” Bjornsson said. “I had $7,000 of fines to pay off, and I worked at a pizza place. How am I supposed to pay those off? I needed help.”
Help came in the form of a coach from Jobs and Hope West Virginia.
Vashti Murphy McKenzie, the first woman to be elected as a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, will retire from active ministry at the AME general conference in July. She currently leads the AME’s tenth district, which encompasses the entire state of Texas.
The AME denomination retires all bishops at the general conference closest to their 75th birthday. (The general conference takes place every four years.) McKenzie was scheduled to retire in 2020, but the general conference was postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Russell Moore, the embattled Southern Baptist ethicist and “never Trumper,” is resigning as president of his denomination’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
Moore will be joining the staff of Christianity Today as a public theologian.
In his new role, Moore will help launch a public theology project and serve as its leader, said Tim Dalrymple, president and CEO of Christianity Today. The project will host events and gatherings about public theology and publish content, including Moore’s writing and his Signposts podcast.
Lenny Duncan, a queer, Black pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, is joining Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary as a public theologian to help develop a two-year certification program.
In a statement to the Century, Duncan said he was humbled by the opportunity to help prepare people “for a world beyond the institutional church.”
Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life congregation has chosen internationally renowned architect Daniel Libeskind to design a new building for the site where 11 Jews were gunned down nearly three years ago in the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history.
Libeskind was the unanimous choice of the steering committee as well as of Tree of Life’s board of trustees, and for reasons beyond his architectural qualifications: Libeskind was born to Holocaust survivors living in a homeless shelter in Lodz, Poland, after the war.
Womanist theologian Chanequa Walker-Barnes has joined the faculty of Columbia Theological Seminary as professor of practical theology and pastoral counseling.
In a statement, Millie Snyder, one of the seminary’s board of trustees, said Walker-Barnes’s expertise will help equip seminarians for the work of reconciliation in both the church and the world.
“Dr. Chanequa Walker-Barnes has woven together the best scholarship in clinical psychology with an incarnational faith grounded in justice and faith,” she said.
India’s large diaspora—long a boon to India’s economy—is tapping its wealth, political clout, and expertise to help its home country combat the catastrophic coronavirus surge that has left people to die outside overwhelmed hospitals.
Around the world, people of Indian descent are donating money, setting up telehealth consultations and information sessions, and personally delivering desperately needed oxygen equipment in hopes of beating back the outbreak.