arts and culture on Activism

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, a pervasive sense of societal malaise seems to be affecting a significant portion of the population. Journalist and managing editor of Time , Lily Rothman, ...

There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of ...

In their excellent book on reconciliation, Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice share a story about how small acts of beauty, done well, can lead to reconciliation: A friend told us of visiting a very ...

Moralistic behavior change done for one's self simply manipulates and leverages radical selfishness without challenging it.

When an issue is less central to one’s identity it’s possible to feel, for example, “I really should do more to help those in need, but it’s just too hard’ or ‘I just can’t find the time.’ But when th...

In order to exercise leadership on that challenge, they had to go beyond what people expected of them, risk testing some relationships, and move themselves and their organizations into unfamiliar terr...

In 1947, budding theologian Carl F. H. Henry wrote a short book titled The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. In it he surveys the American fundamentalist movement’s engagement with the most ...

When an issue is less central to one’s identity it’s possible to feel, for example, “I really should do more to help those in need, but it’s just too hard’ or ‘I just can’t find the time.’ But when th...

Stewardship means to consciously take up our cultural power, investing it intentionally among the seemingly powerless, putting our power at their disposal to enable them to cultivate and create.

American history books contain stories of women who changed society with their hard work and insistence on justice. The women of the suffrage movement clad in white, those active in the temperance mov...

Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.

The primary action of the Church in the world is the action of its members in their daily work.

I grew up near Washington D.C. surrounded by politics…I helped with the campaign of a friend’s father as he ran for state office, watched our friendly county supervisor become a US congressman, and le...

Like the early Christians, we must move into a sometime hostile world armed with the revolutionary gospel of Jesus Christ. With this powerful gospel we shall boldly challenge the status quo.

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will.

Are these hyperscheduled, overactive individuals really creating anything new? Are they guilty of passion in any way? Do they have a new vision for their government? For their community? Or for themse...

All good work is done in defiance of management

People like me, Martin Luther King Jr., and a few others sometimes earn a hero status for things we did during the civil rights movement, but really the daily, faithful acts of ordinary black and whit...

Cultural transformation in a church or organization must go beyond interpersonal models of changing “one person at a time,” which dominates Western evangelical thinking. The goals of reconciliation ne...

Individualism is a denial that life has any meaning except the gratification of the ego; in politics it must end anarchy. It is not possible for one man to be both Christian and individualist.

A contemplative politics entails a two-part movement, one that parallels Thoreau’s injunction to be wary of trivia and devoted to eternal truths. The first involves an askesis, a kind of self-discipli...

Whenever I have encountered any kind of deep problem with civilization anywhere in the world—be it the logging of rain forests, ethnic or religious intolerance or the brutal destruction of a cultural ...

The defiance of established authority, religious and secular, social and political, as a world-wide phenomenon may well one day be accounted the outstanding event of the last decade.

I am not perfect, and I will struggle with the “old Jim,” who was and is influenced by American culture, narratives and values. But the key is that identity comes before behavior. We almost always do ...

There is power in bringing untold stories to light. The freedom to speak about the reality of suffering and death results in a freedom from denial.

Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothi...

Identity drives motivation, motivation drives action, and action drives results. For example, if someone speeds past me at ninety miles per hour on the highway, odds are I won’t chase them down and is...

God, the fact that we feel uncomfortable is evidence that we perceive the injustices in our world. We don’t ask you to help us hear the cries of injustice, but rather to give us courage to act against...

My temptation is to tackle everything at once, or nothing at all.

No voluntary act of spiritual discipline is ever to become an occasion for self-promotion. Otherwise, any value to the act is utterly vitiated.