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Six assumptions that allow white evangelicals to flout biblical norms
By Alan Bean Steven Teles In The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement, Steven Teles describes how the conservative movement was able to undermine and largely replace what he calls the Liberal Legal...
View ArticlePerspectives on Immigration: cultural concerns
Immigration reform is an issue making headlines in our nation. Both sides of the political aisle discuss and debate the best way forward for the nation, while seeking to preserve both the laws of our...
View ArticleEvangelicals find “the heart of God” on immigration
American Evangelicals are gradually joining the push for immigration reform and the impetus behind this shift in emphasis is most apparent in Focus on the Family, a para-church organization founded by...
View ArticleHoly week demanded holy dialogue
Did Holy Week this year seem to shout out for a new dimension of holy dialogue? It did to me. It was an unusual and disruptive week in several ways. It caused me to think about the need for a new depth...
View ArticleMy Boston take-aways
These posts are truly difficult to write; partly because if you want to be real then you have to confess some things and partly because events such as occurred last week are not easy to process. I am...
View ArticleThe fence through Friendship Park
A fence runs through Friendship Park at the western end of the U.S. border with Mexico. A 20-foot tall steel structure begun in late 2011 and completed in early 2012, it begins at the very spot where...
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Boston is about us
When I recovered from the initial shock and horror of the Boston Marathon bombing, I automatically switched into advocacy mode. “Please, God,” I thought, “don’t let the perpetrators turn out to be...
View ArticleCan you imagine?
“Can you imagine being in a place where you do not know how to communicate??” That is how my friend from South America began a short presentation she will be giving as a panelist for a breakout at this...
View ArticleTen reasons why I pray during Ramadan
My initial experiences with Ramadan years ago in West Africa were at times confusing to say the least. I will never forget getting caught in an awful traffic jam in the main thoroughfare of one of the...
View ArticlePublic policy and the heart of God
For the past 15 years, I have directed a faith-based non-profit called Friends of Justice. It all started in Tulia, Texas when a massive drug bust in the summer of 1999 inspired an article in the...
View ArticleIs America a culture or an idea?
Is America an idea about “liberty and justice for all” that can be embraced by an endless assortment of people from a wild array of cultures; or is America a uniquely White Western cultural phenomenon...
View ArticleLove has no borders
In April of 2011 the legislature of Alabama passed the harshest anti-immigrant law in America. Central Alabama had just been hit by a series of devastating tornadoes, and churches were preoccupied with...
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A celebration
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hindmarsh/ She is young, energetic and smart. She wants to study genetics. Her English is broken, but she is absolutely determined to make it perfect. She realizes that...
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Reckoning with the children on our doorstep
By Alan Bean What do we do with the unaccompanied children, some say as many as 100,000, who have surrendered to American border officials in the last few months? Barack Obama speaks of a humanitarian...
View ArticleNational Welcoming Week
Recently I went to an Iftar. This is the evening meal eaten during Ramadan by Muslims after the sun goes down. In Houston, where 25% of the population is foreign born, it is easy to become friends with...
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Dallas preacher says Jesus would seal the border
The Rev. Robert Jeffress thinks Jesus would build a fence at the U.S. border so desperate children from violence-ridden countries would be discouraged from heading north. “Yes, Jesus loved children,”...
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“They are children”: Preachers and politicians part ways at the border
While politicians apportion blame for the thousands of unaccompanied Central American children arriving at our border, the faith community looks for ways to help. I over-simplify, of course. We...
View ArticleRepenting of Christianity
Chinua Achebe’s classic novel Things Fall Apart centers around the life on Okonkwo, the powerful leader of his clan and their village, one of nine villages in the Umuofia region of Nigeria. Okonkwo is...
View Articleblessed are the barely there
Believing in God is hard. If anyone tells you otherwise they’re lying, or they’ve been frozen for eons under a housing development in Southern California like a Cro-magnon Brendan Frazier in Encino...
View ArticleIs Jesus irrelevant to the immigration debate?
Elation and outrage. President Obama’s executive decision on immigration sparked one reaction or the other in the American soul, if there is such a thing. Perhaps we must speak of two American souls....
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