politics
Young Evangelicals Fighting for Climate Action
For students at this top evangelical college, loving God means protecting creation. That includes dealing with the human sources of climate change.
KtB Wants You…To Write About the Eclipse
The total solar eclipse passing over the continental U.S. this August 21st is the first to do so in 99 years, but American eclipse stories go back much farther than that. It was a “Dark Day” in the spring of 1780 that apparently convinced Shaker leader Mother Ann Lee to “open” her revelation to new…
We’ve Got the Torch Now
The small rural town where I went to high school had a newspaper and I looked on its classified section last year and there were three jobs. I’m not going to lie, I’m distraught over a Trump presidency, but I can understand the hopelessness of these people, because I have lived among them. I actually…
Remember That the Devil Is Quite A Gentleman
There’s a long history of calling people the devil. It doesn’t usually turn out well.
Aleppo Is Us
With the recent “What is Aleppo?” gaffe by Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson, the news cycle has long moved on from the child whose image quickly became an icon of that city’s daily disaster. I first saw Omran Daqneesh on the front page of the New York Times, sitting bolt upright in an ambulance. I…
Breaking Up With White Jesus
It’s December of 2014. 2am, 3am, 4am, 5am, I thrash and turn over in bed and click on my phone, know I should not click on my phone, click on my phone. And there are the messages, the emails, the notes that never seem to stop. The usual stuff women get on the Internet: you…
Defying the Certainty of the Christian Right
Earl Taylor, with his white hair, lean figure, and suit, has a mildly aristocratic appearance. He carries himself and speaks in a mild manner–admittedly, there is also something of the Sunday school teacher about him–yet his ideas are among the most dangerous in America. This last comment sounds both clichéd and hyperbolic. Even so, Taylor…
Dear Cruelest Month: Spring Isn’t Arab
Once upon a time we lay in bed trying to imagine what shelling sounded like. We being me and the man I loved. Ah, those early days of my Orientalism and our naïvete. It was winter,2012, and I had started sleeping in the storage space above my kitchen. It was the only place in my…
The Perfect Victim
Have you noticed those suing against same-sex marriage are all extraordinarily nice?
Saint Frances and the Minimum Wage
What does Saint Francis have to do with Seattle Mayor Ed Murray’s proposal to raise the city’s minimum wage from $9.32 to $15 an hour? Other than befriending and becoming one of the poor, the Italian Catholic friar that preached to the birds has nothing to do with the lowest hourly remuneration in the birthplace…