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June 3, 2020

Volume 137, Issue #12

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Features

How My Mind Has Changed

Do I consider myself a Christian?

I know one thing: there is holiness.

by Annie Dillard

Asylum seekers face nearly impossible hurdles. The Dilley Pro Bono Project tries to help.

A week with 12 law students volunteering in South Texas

by Amy Frykholm

Three women in Cleveland who are serving the most vulnerable

Yvonka Hall, Yvonne Pointer, and Frances Mills are beacons of hope in the face of racial disparities.

by Leah C. K. Lewis

First Person

A pastor’s pandemic diary

I hope our little flock survives. But the church is nonessential to God’s redemption of the world.

by Isaac S. Villegas

How My Mind Has Changed

Caught up in God

Early on, I got caught up in the logic of the Spirit—and in the steady beat of black life.

by Willie James Jennings

Reflection

Ahmaud Arbery’s lynching begs America to respond

What would it take to stop seeing neighbors as intruders and threats?

by Dorothy Sanders Wells

Reflection

On the spirituality of quarantine

How can we be “witnesses to the ends of the earth” right now? I have found some help from St. Benedict and St. Gregory.

by M. Craig Barnes

Books

How asylum seeker Rosayra Pablo Cruz got her children back

Pablo Cruz and Julie Collazo tell a story from the migrant detention crisis.

by Elizabeth Felicetti

Journeying with the Lakota people

A historical overview of a people’s battles and victories

by Tony Jones

Seeing disability through a lens of wonder

Brian Brock’s book is both academic and deeply personal.

by Aaron Klink

Why be Protestant?

Phillip Cary locates the heart of Protestantism in the gospel promise it reveals.

by Jason Micheli

Departments

What happened in Africa after the pandemic of 1918

Something as big as a plague always remakes the religious landscape.

by Philip Jenkins

Faith Matters

A neurodiverse God?

The parable of the widow and the unjust judge might give us a radical look at the face of God.

by Samuel Wells

On Art

Hospital break room art collection, by various artists

For those who work in health care, the COVID-19 crisis is taking quite a toll. Many nurses are short not only on medical supplies but on sustaining hope....

art selection and comment by Lil Copan

From the Editors

How can we begin to untangle ourselves from the demands of whiteness?

Being open to changes of mind and heart is a necessary first step.

First Words

Churches obsessed with their right to reopen are missing the point

Genuine Christian faith is larger than the US Constitution.

by Peter W. Marty

News

Methodist Native caucus supports tribe at risk of losing ancestral lands

While most people in the United States have been focusing on the COVID-19 pandemic, a decision to revoke the reservation status of a Native American tribe’s more than 300 acres in Massachusetts has gone relatively unnoticed, according to the Nativ...

by Ginny Underwood

People

Greg Zanis, carpenter who built crosses for mass shooting victims, dies at 69

Few knew him by name, but many saw his signature handiwork on the side of the road or in media images from scenes of tragedy—squat, white wooden crosses with the names of gun victims scrawled in black ink....

by Yonat Shimron