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In the absence of strong political leadership, someone has to fill the void.

A failed high school science experiment increased my empathy for those who can’t sleep.

My queer IQ was low. I decided to show up anyway.

And it was enabled by social structures of permission.

In the life of early Israel, Gottwald found a God of economic justice.

On Fridays in the church basement, I see glimpses of something precarious and beautiful.

Social media platforms are damaging democracy, and it’s not primarily about what speech they do or don’t moderate.

What do Reinhold Niebuhr's blind spots tell us about our own?

Campaigns to remove books from schools and libraries in the United States have increased dramatically in recent years. This book-banning frenzy has risen to such absurd heights that a recent headline read: “Florida rejects 41% of new math textbooks, citing critical race theory among its reasons.”

I  still remember how annoyed I was the first time someone told me I should eliminate the phrase “bad neighborhood” from my vocabulary. I was a 24-year-old Chicagoan, with one graduate degree already in hand and six years of city living under my belt. By that point I had mostly forsaken the colorblind conservatism of my youth, which so clearly failed to make sense of the sharp inequalities inscribed into the urban landscape.