I entered graduate school to study history in the spring of 1970—a wild and contentious time. President Nixon had just expanded the Vietnam War into Cambodia and college campuses erupted. On more than twenty-five campuses, violent clashes pitted students against...
Community
The Evil of Indifference
Abraham Joshua Heschel
This article is part of the Arc of Justice series. There is an evil which most of us condone and are even guilty of: indifference to evil. We remain neutral, impartial, and not easily moved by the wrongs done unto other people. Indifference to evil is more insidious...
Black Lives Matter and the Church
Eugene F. Rivers III, Jacqueline C. Rivers
This article is part of the Arc of Justice series, responding to the killing of George Floyd and the international movement it has sparked. On Juneteenth, Plough’s Peter Mommsen talked to Rev. Eugene F. Rivers III and Dr. Jacqueline Rivers about the international...
The Habits of Exile
J.L. Wall
During this time when many religious communities are prevented from meeting together, can Christians learn from Jews what it takes to practice holiness in everyday acts, to move, for this limited time, from sacramental Temple-like worship the home-centered daily worship of the exile?
Changing Police Culture from the Inside Out
Ernie Stevens, Joe Smarro
America’s criminal justice system—and police norms in particular—are under the public microscope. Ernie Stevens and Joe Smarro are cops from San Antonio’s police department who have played a pivotal role in seeding a more humane culture there, with ripple effects emanating out into the broader community. In this conversation, they share all that they’ve learned and would like to see as the country wrestles with “Defund the police.”
Tenacious Solidarity
Anne Snyder
If there’s one thing that binds us together as human beings traveling through this particular year, it’s that no one of us has a complete picture of what’s really going on. Neither do our political leaders. Neither do the experts. While certainly not a new feature of...
Lost at Sea
Brad Littlejohn
Americans have told themselves radically different stories about the COVID-19 crisis. It’s worthwhile to fight through to a common understanding of where we have been and where we are, and one that’s rooted in the reality that is beyond our stories—but it’s not easy.
Christianity and the Social Question
Patrick Pierson
The current complex crisis reveals the poverty of liberal and individualistic understandings of sociopolitical order. As troubling and painful as it is, this moment is also an opportunity. Abraham Kuyper’s diagnosis and prescription for his time ring true. We must offer an alternative vision for our collective life together, one that recognizes the inviolable dignity of the individual without dissociating that individual from the broader community within which she finds her home.
Vocation in a Time of Precedented Uncertainty
Noah Toly
Where does our work fit into questions about the future of the global economy, the possibility of environmental integrity, the pace of scientific discovery, or the scale of global charitable giving? How can our own sense of calling withstand such massively scaled issues?