We receive grace from God – it cannot be bought, earned, deserved, or demanded, but can only be received as a gift. Wouldn’t you think that when a person is conscious of being given grace by God, that person would want to turn around and offer the gift of grace to others?
This country would be wise to study the presidents’ work and morals, attend to their memory and legacy with honest and frank assessments as to their failings and faults, and seek a more perfect union in our time. This indeed, is holy and prophetic work in the public square as we parcel out truth from untruth. This is important and nuanced work as we fight for the soul of our democracy.
In a globalized world where a disease outbreak in one country can turn into a pandemic, where natural disasters, conflicts, and the people displaced by them cross borders, does withdrawing U.S. aid and collaboration with other nations in addressing these risks make America safer? Does reneging on commitments we have already made to other nations, damaging trust and credibility in the United States abroad, make us stronger? Does abruptly cutting thousands of American jobs related to international aid make America more prosperous?
Who do you believe deserves all the rights and privileges of American citizenship? Who do you think should be able to “secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity”? The future of the United States of America hangs on how the majority of its citizens answer these two questions.
Some analysts claim that without the support of Baptists and other evangelicals, neither Donald Trump nor Jimmy Carter would have ever lived in the White House. They have that in common but in almost every other way, they are very different.
Nonviolent resistance is about peacefully but decidedly disrupting oppressive tactics. Although it sometimes puts the person engaged in it at risk of things like arrest or violence themselves, when done well, it uses creativity, self-sacrifice, and solidarity to affirm the humanity of the vulnerable.