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What if we began with character, my students and I asked, rather than rights?

ER doctor Thomas Fisher writes with moral clarity—and a whiff of hopelessness.

In our three-year lectionary cycle, most Hebrew Bible texts come up once at most. Isaiah 58 is assigned five times. We justice-minded Christians tend to find additional reasons to turn to it as well.

When NPR correspondent John Burnett retired recently after 36 years, Weekend Edition host Scott Simon asked him what lesson he would take away from his years of covering global events. “If I could wave my wand and make one simple change in the world,” said Burnett, it would be to “elect more women leaders. There’s too much testosterone in positions of power. They get us in these foolish, macho, prideful, and unnecessary conflicts over and over and over.” As the interview concluded, I thought to myself: how true.

Willie Dwayne Francois III, senior pastor of Mount Zion Baptist Church of Pleasantville, New Jersey, directs the master of professional studies program at New York Theological Seminary, which is the oldest master’s degree program offered by a theological institution in a US prison setting. The program is active in two New York State prisons: Sing Sing men’s prison and, as of last year, Bedford Hills women’s prison.

How did you become interested in the intersection of theological education and the incarceration system?

Luke’s Beatitudes are for the poor. What if Matthew’s are, too?

If so, what did he mean?

My only thought as I sat in rush hour traffic once again: I was promised flying cars. I grew up watching The Jetsons, the reboot that aired in the 1980s. The Saturday morning cartoon embodied everything that I thought the future would hold: there would be flying cars, colonies in outer space, robots who did all the cleaning, and good-paying jobs that consisted of pressing buttons all day. I couldn’t wait to experience an entire meal by popping a single tablet into my mouth, just like they did on the show.

A murder mystery can provide sharp social commentary—and great fun.

To build the Beloved Community, we need to think and talk and act differently about bodies.