Check out all that is happening this weekend in Rhode Island’s faith communities!

Whatever its stated goal and original intent, it has been fully colonized by a full-throated Christian Nationalism, the result of the marriage between religious fundamentalists and the political right. In this sense, it is difficult to see how the National Day of Prayer has really anything to do with prayer anymore.

But as people of faith, our hope does not rest in a Supreme Court, a congress, or an idolatrous executive. Fear has been overcome by grace, and the love of God that compels us forward lights the path ahead.

Standing in Solidarity with the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Resources regarding conflict with Iran.

Birthright citizenship reaffirms not only our faith-based commitments, but also our belief in a democracy that maintains our longstanding commitment to welcoming the stranger.

Christian teachings on our responsibility for one another are unequivocally clear: to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and mind and to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Lost to history (and not by accident) is also the reality that Dr. King knew that racial disparities were intimately linked not only to our nation’s original sin, but also to economic exploitation and militarism.

The conversation around Mr. Kirk’s public stature has become confused. While his murder is clearly a moral evil, his public veneration is unwarranted.

So, dear siblings, let us care for one another in speech and in action…let us all work together to end all forms of hate in our church, our communities, our state, and our world.

Over the past few months, we’ve seen at least one of those views loud and clear, expressed primarily through various far-right ideologies of sexism, xenophobia, and white supremacy masquerading as Christianity.

People of faith are certainly free to pray as they see fit – in school, at a restaurant, or in church. What we are not allowed to do is to require or sanction prayer as if it were an essential part of American life.

I have argued (and preached!) that Christian faith that is grounded in an inclusive, love-based understanding of scripture has, to the detriment of American civil society, vacated the public sphere. In its place is a Christianity that is hardly recognizable in even the most cursory reading of the New Testament.   

Our advocacy is grounded in our response to God’s grace, a call found at the intersection of our love for God and our love for neighbor, expressed in our obligation to the stranger and the dispossessed.

This is the Christian scandal of incarnation – that through the cross, all of creation is united with and to God’s project of love. That even though Christ is revealed to us in a specific moment in time, we have also never existed apart from God’s love.

Our work does not really change. Voting in an election is no more the end of our participation in its democratic process than the notion that the extent of our Christian worship is confined to an hour on Sunday morning.

The unpacking of the marriage between certain far-right political and religious interests is central to developing a response that not only takes seriously the effort to undermine American democracy, but also seeks to create healthy discourse about the ways in which our democratic systems can learn and grow beyond this inflection point.

Do we resign ourselves to the house of fear or seek to cut paths through (and with) the house of love?

Our narratives of faith and state are contested – our beliefs about their origin and development over time, while grounded in various theological and historical commitments, often include a healthy dose of mythmaking.

The moral arc of the universe bends towards justice when we get a little disruptive – when we cause some holy trouble – when we reverse our spiritual amnesia and remember that our essential interconnectedness compels us to act courageously and love outrageously.