government and politics on Privilege

In January 1999 I was flying on Saudi Arabian Airlines from Mumbai, India, to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and then onward to London. I arrived at the Mumbai airport to find a long line. Perhaps seventy-five...

Gracious God, in Christ Jesus, you teach us to love our neighbors but instead we build dividing walls of hostility. You show us how to love one another as sisters and brothers but instead we hide from...

Gracious God, you have placed us in a culture that seems more and more filled with politics. Forgive us for every time we respond to these politics with decisions that do not honor Christ. Pardon us f...

Merciful Jesus Give us courage to deny privilege to lay down favor and safety in order to take up the cross of opportunity and justice Too often we fail to do this Merciful Jesus Give us courage to d...

Robert H. Richards and Ethan Couch illustrate how opportunity bends toward affluent white males. Richards was found guilty of raping his three-year-old daughter, but because of his connection to the D...

A person who wields power cannot see truth; that is the privilege of the powerless.

Jesus explains what undergirds the actions of Paul, Isaiah, and Rev. Dr. King in two of his Beatitudes. He says, “Blessed are those who grieve, for they will be comforted. . . . Blessed are those who ...

God of Love and Mercy—Father, Son and Holy Spirit: As those beloved by You...You give us the privilege of loving others and praying for them ... as we do today. We pray on behalf of those for whom th...

In one generation, the place of Christianity within culture dramatically shifted as we experienced what theologians and sociologists of religion call the “death of Christendom.” Christendom isn’t Chri...

While I was at a concert in college, I responded to a flyer requesting volunteers to sponsor a child overseas. For years I read the letters from this little girl in El Salvador. Ruth seemed happy to b...

Sarah Grimke, the daughter of a slaveholder and judge in Charleston, South Carolina, was five years old in 1797 when the sight of an enslaved person being whipped seared her conscience. Like many whit...

Looking through the lens of Holy Scripture, human work must be seen first and foremost as value contribution, not economic compensation. We can have a flourishing, fruitful life even if we don’t get a...

On April 12, 1963, eight clergy—two Methodist bishops, two Episcopal bishops, one Roman Catholic Bishop, a Rabbi, a Presbyterian, and a Baptist—wrote a letter addressed to the citizens of Alabama. Thi...

Almighty God, to whom we must account for all our powers and privileges: Guide the people of the United States ( or of this community) in the election of officials and representatives; that, by faith...

In October 2014 Wired magazine reported on the dirty work every social media company must somehow handle: moderating the deluge of exploitative, degrading content posted in unimaginable quantities aro...

Our freedom is our supreme dignity; that makes us children of the Most high; we can enjoy it only by living in a partly chancy world.

In the context of justice, I think what Christians need to confess about their pride isn’t so much about taking credit away from God but from the people we help. One version of this is sometimes refer...

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

Ability involves responsibility; power, to its last particle, is duty.

The relative freedom which we enjoy depends of public opinion. the law is no protection. governments make laws, but whether they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on the general temp...

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

Why is power a gift? Because power is for flourishing. When power is used well, people and the whole cosmos come more alive to what they were meant to be. And flourishing is the test of power.

Power is meant to be shared with the goal of empowering others. Hoarded power weakens others and exalts oneself. Power, when grounded in biblical values, serves others by liberating them. It acknowled...

A being is free only when it can determine and limit its activity.

As people seek out the social settings they prefer—as they choose the group that makes them feel the most comfortable—the nation grows more politically segregated—and the benefit that ought to come wi...

The greatest gift that God . . . made in Creation, and the most formidable to His Goodness, and that which he prizes the most, was the freedom of the will.

May we think of freedom, not as the right to do as we please, but as the opportunity to do what is right.

Liberty without virtue would be no blessing to us.

To illustrate how the racial oppression of previous generations has benefited European Americans, we can look at the fate of Native Americans. When Europeans arrived in North America, Indians owned al...

Freedom is never given; it is won.